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Loaded logging trucks: We see them all the time on New Hampshire roads and highways. Have you ever wondered where all those logs are headed? When we explored this question at the Forest Society, the result was an article in our membership magazine discussing new and traditional markets for New Hampshire’s wood.

Writer Sarah Earle found that while many of those logs are en route to our own mills, loads of them – and products made from them – are winding up in some surprising places.

Middle East countries, particularly United Arab Emirates and Pakistan, are buying New Hampshire’s eastern white pine, the same species that once was considered the sole property of King George, who alone could commission its harvest for masts for his British Royal Navy ships. “These new (Middle East) markets are just clamoring for the stuff,” Sarah Smith, a forest industry specialist for the University of New Hampshire Cooperative Extension, told Earle for her article. “They use it for trim and concrete forms and things like that. They like it because it’s easy to work with using hand tools.”

China is buying our red oak for use in manufacturing wood products, some of which ends up back here in America while much stays in China to meet growing demand there, Smith said.

Canadian mills are hungry for New Hampshire logs, both hardwood and softwood, to turn into lumber as well as finished products like flooring. “The market is a lot better than we’ve seen in the last six or eight years. A lot of Canadian mills have started up in the last year that had been shut down prior,” said Scott Astle, export manager for Green Crow Corporation’s Northeast region.

From NewHampshire.com: http://www.unionleader.com/article/20141109/NEWHAMPSHIRE0305/141109169