Timber!
South Carolina’s forests are fuller than at any time in the past 100 years, just as demand for wood is very slowly on the rise and prices also are creeping up.
That could portend a pine harvest boom in the next seven years and trigger the most significant seedling replant of the 21st century in the state, forestry experts say – depending upon how fast the U.S. housing market comes back.
A new study, set to be released next month, predicts the 20 million-ton annual wood harvest rate in the Palmetto State will increase by between 4 million and 8 million more tons by 2020, a 20 percent to 40 percent increase.
That, of course, is good news for tree growers, who have been sitting on a couple of decades or more worth of harvest-ready softwoods, as they rode out the Great Recession and the struggle to begin recovery from it.
“We are excited to see that the study shows increased total wood availability for many years to come,” said state forester Henry Kodama, of the South Carolina Forestry Commission. “South Carolina’s forest industry and forests are critical to the state’s economic and environmental health.”
The new study, a nine-month undertaking known as the “20/15 Project,” is the work of the Forestry Commission, the South Carolina Forestry Association – which represents landowners, tree growers, conservationists and others – and their partners, including regional timber market specialist Bob Abt, of North Carolina State University, who conducted the study.
The study, initiated in 2009 – after the recession, which officially ran from December 2007 to June 2009 – was designed to help the South Carolina forestry industry recover from the recession and have a greater economic impact on the state.
Forestry products in the state include sawtimber – which is a mature, large-diameter pine – and pulp, paper and pellets made from small, roundwood pine.
Forestry is the No. 1 manufacturing industry in South Carolina in terms of jobs, at 90,624 employed, and payroll, at $4.1 billion annually, according to state and federal statistics.