Timberland Investment Firm Plans Sawmill

Mission Forest Products, a subsidiary of Timberland Investment Resources, LLC, plans to build a sawmill in Corinth, Miss., costing $160 million and creating 130 jobs at the mill and providing economic and employment opportunities for forest products firms and workers based in north Mississippi.

Mission Forest Products, which expects to be operational by 2022, will be capable of producing 250MMBF annually. The state-of-the-art pine sawmill will be financed through capital provided by investors that TIR represents.

“Our objective is for this mill to become one of the lowest-cost and most reliable suppliers of high-quality dimensional lumber products in North America,” says TIR Managing Director Christopher Mathis. “We intend to do this by capitalizing on three things—the abundance of high-quality timber in the area, Corinth’s proximity to the growing housing markets of the U.S. South and lower Midwest, and the low-cost, high-efficiency nature of the mill’s design.”

Mathis says the project has received tremendous support from Governor Reeves and the Mississippi Development Authority; The Alliance of Corinth, including President Clayton Stanley; Alcorn County Board of Supervisors; city of Corinth and the Tennessee Valley Authority.

TIR decided to locate the mill in Corinth due to the rail and road access it offers to growing population centers like Memphis, Nashville, Birmingham and the lower U.S. Midwest—all areas where lumber demand is high and is projected to increase in the future due to commercial and population expansion.

In addition, the area surrounding Corinth, which sits where the state lines of Tennessee, Alabama and Mississippi intersect, also is a prime timber-growing region that currently is underserved with sawmilling capacity despite the plentiful inventory of high-quality timber that is growing in its vast forestlands, which are generally owned by local families and large institutional investors, such as those TIR represents.

TIR also was attracted to the Corinth area because it has a skilled forest products workforce—one that includes well-trained and highly experienced mill workers and other forest products professionals like loggers, truckers and silvicultural contractors.

“Agriculture is Mississippi’s top economic driver, and our abundance of forestland—nearly 20 million acres statewide—provides tremendous opportunities for economic growth and job creation in this vital sector,” comments Governor Tate Reeves. “I am honored to welcome Mission Forest Products to our state and look forward to the economic ripple effect the opening of this state-of-the-art sawmill will have on the the local economy of Alcorn County, and all of Mississippi.”

Mississippi Development Authority is providing assistance for infrastructure improvements. The company also qualifies for the Advantage Jobs Rebate Program, which provides a rebate to eligible businesses that create new jobs exceeding the average annual wage of the state or county in which the company locates or expands. Alcorn County and the city of Corinth are providing grant funds and in-kind assistance for infrastructure improvements. ARC and TVA also are providing grant assistance for the project.

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