Posted on 07/02/2025 8:45:34 AM PDT by BenLurkin
Weyerhaeuser has broken ground on a $500 million plant in Arkansas to produce engineered lumber from the small trees that have piled up across the pine belt after the closure of many pulp and paper mills.
It is a big bet on one of the most depressed commodities in America: pine trees that are too small, crooked or otherwise unfit for making lumber. The decline of pulp and paper mills has left some timberland owners with wood they can’t sell.
Several ventures have sought to capitalize on the pulpwood glut, including burning it to generate electricity—locally and abroad—and manufacturing oriented strand board, a type of wood panel known as OSB.
Weyerhaeuser’s plant will be largely heated and powered by burning bark, branches and sawdust, but its gambit is more like making OSB.
The factory near Monticello, Ark., will produce TimberStrand, a laminated strand lumber made by pressing together and gluing thin slices of wood. It is stronger and stays straighter than regular lumber and is used for headers and footers and to frame tall walls, and for studs that hold up cabinets and heavy tile.
Weyerhaeuser and others currently make laminated strand lumber with low-value hardwood, such as aspen and birch. Weyerhaeuser has a facility in Ontario, Canada, that is perpetually sold out. Chief Executive Devin Stockfish said Weyerhaeuser figured out how to use Southern yellow pine.
Stockfish said he expects the Arkansas plant to sell out its 10 million cubic feet of annual production once it opens in 2027 and to annually generate about $100 million in earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization.
Pulpwood prices have plunged since the digital age closed the book on paper demand. Although Americans are consuming more cardboard than ever, new domestic mills are fed with recycled boxes.
(Excerpt) Read more at us.atoshipping.com ...
I am not sure what they are talking about. Most pine trees around here are straighter than Hiawatha’s arrow.
Most, but there are exceptions, and turning them into a profit-making and value-adding item is a good thing for everyone.
‘Osarks’: aux arcs
Did that name come from the Osage orange, that the French thought the local wood was good for making bows or, what the heck are talking about here?
Explain yourself Arkie.
This also exactly sums up the US cattle / beef market
due to covid, USDA, EPA/FDA, environmentalism, government regs etc.... America's beef processing is almost entirely in the hands of a few very large firms
And while the US cattle herd is at 60 year lows, and food inflation is rampant, individual ranchers are still getting very low prices for their cattle
I was in Washington State last week for a high school reunion. I learned that all of the lumber mills in the area had been shut down because of the adverse logging regulations enacted over the past 40 plus years.
Meanwhile, the tree huggers are whining today about the high prices of houses.
And the size of forest fires have been growing over the past 40 plus years. When loggers cannot harvest sustainable trees, no roads are built or maintained in the forests. That is one of several reasons why forest fires are becoming larger.
We discussed it here before.
It is more and more recognized that the “save the forest” environs practically destroyed our forests!
There are too many trees around, and they cause these devastating wildfires.
We need to thin our forest!
But, thanks to the years of neglect, we do not have the people, and there is lack of demand for trees which are not first class.
Companies will not cut trees which they cannot sell.
It used to be these weed trees were used for paper, but we have so much recycled one now, we cannot use the wood!
So many paper mills went out of business!
Investments like this will, hopefully, help us to save the forest by creating demand for subpar trees produced by thinning, when applying proper forest management!
“Americans are consuming more cardboard than ever”
LOL. Now whatever could have caused that?
“I was in Washington State last week for a high school reunion. I learned that all of the lumber mills in the area had been shut down because of the adverse logging regulations enacted over the past 40 plus years.”
Your buddy gave you fake info!
I ain’t no Arkie. But this plant ain’t in the Ozarks. It is over near the delta.
We drove to Coeur d’Alene, ID this morning on US-95. The number of lumber trucks heading north on 95 to the Chico Mill in Athol, Idaho is amazing.
Around here, there is no shortage of pulpwood. The trees are purposefully planted too thick and the weak are turned into paper and the strong are made into saw logs (lumber).
What I heard from foresters, the people who really know, is, that we have at least 10x more trees for acre than it is consider sustainable.
But, there are lawsuits, regulations, lack of qualified workers and lack of demand!
This should help with the demand.
This is called forest management. Kind of Darwinism at its best. The trees compete against each other for the sun. The weaker die, the stronger grow very healthy.
The weaker ones need to be regularly thinned and hauled away.
When they stay, they are perfect fuel for forest fires! Forest fires are nature own way to thin the forest!
Unfortunately, lots of misguided “environmentalists”, media types and lawyers disrupted this cycle and created the disaster we are in now.
Luckily, some of these people are, grudgingly, admitting their errors and letting proper forest management take over.
Too late, too slow!
https://www.naturallywood.com/products/laminated-strand-lumber-lsl/
Impressive stuff, good looking too bet it takes a good stain. If they don’t use formaldehyde based glues it won’t be bad for indoor VOC levels either.
People down on industrial hemp but you can make this exact product with it, and it takes 6 months seed to full sized with the equivalent fiber mass as an acre for acre of tree’s that takes 5 years for poplar and 8 for pine to achieve the same mass in tonnes. In the deep South you get two harvests per year.
In semi arid area’s agave fiber production is 10 times that of tree’s on a hectare per hectare basis agave being the number one biomass land plant by tonnes/hectare. Cellulose is cellulose fibers it’s the resins that make this product the fibers just hold the resins together.
My father-in-law (RIP) worked at the Weyerhauser plant in Grande Prairie, Alberta. It was well-run. That facility largely made wood for export to Japan, where they pay top dollar for too quality. The company was good with land management, too. Likely a smart move on their part.
The enviros are slowly backing off and grudgingly letting proper forest management take over.
The problem now is the disaster they caused!
They drove most of lumber companies out of business, they destroyed wood processing industry.
So there is lack of workers skilled and willing to do the hard job of lumberjack. And when the wood is harvested, there is lack of industry to make use of it!
And the forests are so overgrown, it is hard to make even a dent!
I’m more familiar with I-44, southwestern & northern MO: vast tracts of land covered by Black Forest-tier tall straight trees.
Tablerock lake is nice, Branson, though skeeters as big as bumblebees.
Yes it was and is.
I sold wood pulp from there. The BEST fiber for toilet paper. Highly coveted by TP and tissue manufacturers. (The mill was built by P&G for Charmin 50+ years ago).
But I digress......
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