A Hardwood Heads Up

Article by Rich Donnell, Editor-in-Chief, Timber Processing 2014

This issue includes articles on two hardwood sawmill operations—one in Michigan, the other in Georgia, vastly different in size, but both finding their own ways to push forward.

Northern Hardwoods in South Range, Mich. is owned by Rossi Group and J. M. Longyear, the latter the longstanding Michigan upper peninsula based natural resources business.

Like so many companies, Northern Hardwoods experienced a difficult recession, but is battling its way back by way of experienced plant management, and attention to details—namely maintenance and safety, while finding new domestic and export markets for its 17MMBF of annual production, the majority of which is hard and soft maple lumber. The mill’s versatile and substantial drying capabilities stand it in good stead.

The mill now appears to be ready to undergo more substantial upgrading to some of its equipment and technologies.

Then there’s Battle Lumber of Wadley, Ga. Battle Lumber is the nation’s (I guess the world’s) largest single mill producer of hardwood lumber at more than 90MMBF annually, much of it grade lumber. It also operates a pallet operation, flooring plant and chip mill.

We’ve done several articles on the operation through the years, the last one (before the one in this issue) going back to 2005 when the sawmill implemented an optimized end dogging carriage system and gained another 9-10% of yield. Just getting out of college about that time was Thomas Battle, who now oversees production. His father, Tommy, continues to run the business, under the guidance of Tommy’s father and company founder, Wayne Battle.

The operation pretty much ran as is for the past 10 years, until the family members put their heads together and saw a market for timbers (mainly railroad ties), manufactured with smaller logs. After looking at how to make this fit into existing operations, they decided instead to build a new sawmill, which would also allow them to process cants from the existing mill.

The greenfield mill, which started up early this year and also manufactures a fair amount of southern pine lumber, contains some new twists that you can read about in the article that begins on page 14.

So here we have Northern Hardwoods and Battle Lumber, the former gaining some momentum by way of piecemeal tactics, and the latter opting to mount a full frontal assault.

Even before the recession, the U.S. hardwood lumber industry was constrained because of transitioning furniture and flooring markets and altering preferences of species. Combine all of those factors and it’s plain to see why many hardwood lumber operations have not survived.

About 1,300 miles apart north and south are two hardwood lumber companies that are equally impressive to me in how they’ve used their available resources wisely to accomplish their goals.