A £45 MILLION joint venture between the State forestry agency and a US timber company was yesterday officially opened by the Taoiseach, Mr Bruton, almost two years since negotiations began. The Louisiana Pacific Coillte factory at Slieverue, near the new port of Waterford, is expected to create 150 jobs by the summer and more than 370 spin off jobs in harvesting and haulage.

The plant, which already employs 70 people, will make oriented strand board using smaller pieces of wood that would previously have been exported unprocessed. Coillte has a 35 per cent stake in the venture, which will be Louisiana Pacific's first European base. The company has 141 plants in the USA and controls two million acres of forest.