APRIL 2008: AROUND THE STATE
Demand for
sawdust rises as the board market drops
STATEWIDE
Prices have gone so haywire in the timber industry that Oregon
loggers are selling perfectly good Western Hemlock and Douglas
Fir logs to be ground into chips for pulp instead of processed
into lumber.
“Usually we sell the lowest, cheapest product we’ve
got for pulp,” says Randy Hereford, timber manager for
Starker Forests in Corvallis. “Now the board market
is so weak that pulp is our best option.”
The precipitous drop in demand for home-building supplies has
hit Oregon’s lumber producers hard. Western Oregon log
prices fell by 19% between the fourth quarters of 2006 and 2007
and have slid 143% since their peak in 1993 when adjusted for
inflation. The latest casualty was the Weyerhaeuser plant
in Junction City, which closed in March.
Meanwhile, the drop in lumber production has decreased the
supply of wood chips and sawdust, and prices for those
unglamorous commodities have shot up. According to the Wall
Street Journal, the price of sawdust has quadrupled in the past
two years, from $25 to $100 a ton. That’s bad news for
businesses that buy large volumes of wood waste, such as
farmers, horse trainers and nurseries. One would think it would
be good news for producers of wood residuals, but Bill Putney,
of Recycling and Processing Services in Salem, says he loses
those gains to higher production and transportation costs from
rising fuel prices.
“The money looks nice as it moves from your right hand to
your left hand and then out the door,” says Putney,
“but it’s just more money circulating. You’re
handling more dollars, but you’re not making any more
money.”
BEN JACKLET
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