LIVE OAK, Fla. — The Klausner Lumber One sawmill has ceased production.

County Administrator Randy Harris confirmed that the sawmill shut down at the beginning of this week and it is believed to be a permanent shutdown.

“I just know that they are shut down,” Harris said, adding he didn’t have details on the shutdown.

Klausner representatives have not returned phone calls for comment.

The sawmill located in the county’s catalyst site in western Suwannee County opened in the fourth quarter of 2014.

Since that time, though, the sawmill has had temporary shutdowns and layoffs before resuming work. Klausner was one of the county’s top employers, employing 250 workers according to previous numbers from the county’s economic development office. The mill, though, was expected to employ 350 workers working around the clock in four shifts.

“There have been so many occasions where they had been shut down for extended periods of time and then they’d open back up,” Harris said. “So I’m not at all surprised at this.”

Klausner was the first — and largest — tenant in the county’s catalyst site.

After talks between the company and county officials for two years, a deal to bring Klausner to Suwannee County was officially announced in January 2013. The county then deeded the 155-acre property to the Austrian-based company — Klausner Trading USA is headquartered in Myrtle Beach, S.C., and also operates a sawmill in Halifax County, N.C. — for $1 in August 2013. The county purchased the land for close to $1 million.

Construction on the sawmill began in March 2014.

But in recent months with little happening at the sawmill, Harris advised the Board of County Commissioners to pay for a rail crossing at the catalyst site with county funds rather than utilize Community Development Block Grant funding that was tied to job growth.

“If the company isn’t going to produce the jobs, then we don’t need to go through the exercise,” Harris said in the Feb. 4 meeting.

Board Chairman Len Stapleton called the situation “frustrating and disappointing” during that meeting.

“I’m not interested in spending one more dollar of Suwannee County’s taxpayers’ money for anything they are doing because they’re not willing to come to the table and talk to us about their plans moving forward,” Stapleton said. “They have let us go out on this branch by ourselves.”

Those plans moving forward apparently didn’t involve continuing production in Suwannee County.

Despite the history of temporary shutdown’s of the plant, Harris and other Suwannee County officials are optimistic about the sawmill’s future.

“I do however believe the plant has value if another company wants to come in and operate it,” Harris said. “So going forward, I am hopeful and optimistic that may occur.”

Added Jimmy Norris, the county’s economic development director: “We’re working hard on rectifying that situation. We’re doing our best, I can tell you that.”