Minor shake up : markets were soft, but the big mills still packed some production punch

Abstract

For softwood lumber producers 2006 was an ?interesting? year, but mostly in the Chinese proverbial sense of the word. This is illustrated by the top U.S. producer, the Hampton Affiliates sawmill in Willamina, Ore. It receives double kudos for remaining the top producer, but also for being the one among the top 30 that cut back the most, thus doing its share to keep a badly oversupplied market balanced. Its 2006 total of 426MMBF was down 12% from its previous year?s total. Overall, the 200 mills for which we had both 2005 and 2006 data showed a drop in production of almost 6%. Capacity utilization was just 90%.

Citation

Spelter, Henry. 2007. Minor shake up : markets were soft, but the big mills still packed some production punch. Timber processing. (July/Aug. 2007): Pages 25-[29].