The two mills, located in Joyce, LA and Huttig, AK, have thecapacity to produce 300 million board feet of lumber per year. Aspart of the transaction, Plum Creek will enter a 15-year renewablefiber supply agreement to provide logs from its surroundingtimberlands to the facilities at market prices.

In July, Plum Creek, the fourth largest timberland owner in thenation, announced plans to merge with the Timber Co., a separateoperating group of Georgia-Pacific Corp. The merger will create thesecond largest timberland owner in the US, with approximately 7.9million acres. Negotiations are on schedule for closing the mergerin the first quarter of 2001.

This morning, Plum Creek reported third quarter 2000 earnings of$9.5 million, or 14 cents a share. Third quarter 1999 earnings were$46.1 million, or 73 cents a share, which included a one-time taxbenefit of $14.0 million or $0.22 per share.