<B>Willamette Approves Capital Projects</B>

Willamette Industries’ board of directors approved capital projects that will modernize and improve vertical integration in the company’s white paper division and modernize its Dallas, Oregon, sawmill.

The company signed an agreement with Stone Container Corporation to purchase Stone’s Port Wentworth, Georgia, hardwood pulp mill. Willamette intends to start up the pulp mill before October 2000. The mill should eventually produce about 900 tons per day of market pulp.

Further, the company plans to decommission two paper machines at the Kingsport, Tennessee, uncoated free sheet mill, removing 500 tons per day of uncoated free sheet production. In place of the two machines, Willamette will install a world-class paper machine with initial production of about 800 tons per day after start-up, which is scheduled for mid-2002. The machine will use a portion of the hardwood pulp from Port Wentworth until the new pulp mill comes on stream at Kingsport in late 2003 at which time the paper machine will ramp up to full production of 1200 tons per day.

The complete Kingsport project will cost an estimated $475 million over four and a half years. The terms of the sale of the Port Wentworth pulp mill were not disclosed.