The Lumber Manufactory Opens First Sawmill In Mississippi

A Washington, D.C.-based startup with roots in aerospace, defense and autonomous-vehicle technology has opened its first sawmill in northeast Miss., betting more than $15 million that a faster, tech-driven approach to milling can help close what its founders call America’s “lumber manufacturing deficit.”

The Lumber Manufactory LLC held a ribbon-cutting ceremony for its New Albany, Miss. sawmill inside the former Stratford Furniture building on August 13. The mill was designed, built and commissioned in approximately 18 months, according to a TLM spokesperson, and is now produces SYP dimension lumber with an annual 45MMBF capacity. The project has created more than 50 jobs, with 35 in production, and the rest in research, engineering and maintenance.

TLM was co-founded in 2023 by Michael Grasso, CEO, and Andrew Arsht, general counsel, to build what the company calls a new generation of domestic wood-processing capacity. Its business model is to design, build and operate sawmills in regions that need that capacity most, while matching each facility to the local timber resource, workforce, infrastructure and end markets.

“TLM’s team brings together deep experience in timber and wood products with backgrounds at companies including Anduril, Blue Origin, SpaceX and Waymo,” a TLM spokesperson says. “That combination shapes how the company approaches building and operating mills: Pairing sawmilling expertise and wood science with disciplines such as advanced manufacturing, factory design, automation, software development and production-system engineering.”

The result, according to the company, is an approach grounded in the realities of timber and lumber manufacturing but informed by industries built around producing complex systems quickly, reliably and at scale.

TLM says each facility will reflect the timber, site and market conditions of its region, but the underlying engineering methods, technology systems, operating processes and lessons learned are designed to carry from one mill to the next.

TLM’s proprietary operating platform, LumberVision, was developed in-house to serve as a command, control and quality-management system across the company’s mills. “It helps track material from the forest to finished product and brings together production data, quality information, equipment performance, optimizations, and maintenance tools into a common system,” according to the TLM spokesperson. “That data layer gives operators and engineers greater real-time visibility into the mill and enables advanced analytics and AI-driven optimization around areas such as production performance, quality, equipment reliability and material flow.”

Company officials mentioned several factors behind the New Albany decision: A large existing industrial facility with room for ongoing engineering and technology development; an abundant regional supply of SYP; established logging and transportation infrastructure; and a strong manufacturing workforce with deep forestry and wood-products expertise.

Beyond serving as a working sawmill, New Albany also functions as TLM’s technology development center with a live production environment where the company can test and refine new hardware, software and automation before rolling it into future mill designs.

“In that sense, New Albany is both Mill 1 and the foundation for how TLM intends to build future sites,” the company says. “The objective is to get better and faster at designing, building, commissioning and operating each successive facility.”

TLM also pointed to its partnership with the state as a key factor in its decision to locate in New Albany. Gov. Tate Reeves, the Mississippi Development Authority, AccelerateMS, Union County and the New Albany community were all cited as important partners on the project. MDA is supporting the mill through the state’s MFLEX incentive program.

Grasso thanked U.S. Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith at the ribbon cutting for co-sponsoring the SAWMILL Act, a bipartisan bill that would permanently authorize a USDA loan guarantee program supporting sawmill construction and expansion nationwide, with loan-guarantee capacity of up to $220 million. TLM plans to build more mills across the U.S., with the next mill’s location expected to be announced in the coming months.

“We’re not just building mills, we’re building a company that can design, build and deploy these factories at a speed that has never been seen before in this industry. We have to deploy mills fast; we have to be able to process logs big and small,” Grasso said at the event. “And I don’t mean this hyperbolically — we need hundreds of mills, and we’re going to do it. New innovation will take us part of the way there, but excellent public policy will make all the difference.”