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Wood ID Lab Moves To Oregon State

Thanks to a five-year, $4 million federal grant from the Forest Service International Programs Office, the Wood Identification and Screening Center (WISC) is moving to Oregon State University, where it will join the College of Forestry. The WISC was established three years ago to combat the illegal timber trade by using wood samples and their unique chemical signatures to identify the origin and species of wood in lumber, furniture and even musical instruments. According to WISC Director Beth Lebow, illegal logging is the third most profitable transnational crime and costs the U.S. timber industry up to $1 billion annually. According to the World Economic Forum, half of all tropical deforestation is illegal.

Companies in the U.S. are banned under the federal Lacey Act from buying or selling illegally sourced timber products, and the WISC can help companies comply with the act and validate their supply chains in the future. When a wood product is imported, the importer has to submit a Lacey Act declaration that states the genus and species, as well as the origin of the wood. The WISC also works with other government agencies including Homeland Security, Customs and Border Protection and the USDA Animal Plant Health Inspection System.

The WISC lab uses specialized mass spectrometry to analyze the chemical signatures in toothpick-sized wood samples no larger than a toothpick. Cross-referencing the signature with others in its database, WISC can determine a product’s genus and species within seconds. To date, WISC has collected 16,000 chemical signatures from 1,100 wood species.

Latest News

Hoffman Companies Acquires Besse Forest Products Group

The Hoffmann Family of Companies (HFOC), a Florida-based family-owned private equity firm, has acquired Besse Forest Products Group, the longstanding Michigan-based family-run company with 10 manufacturing facilities, including four sawmills, a lumber drying concentration yard, four veneer mills and a cut-to-size plywood mill.

Roseburg Names Tony Ramm Senior VP

Roseburg announced that Tony Ramm has been named Senior Vice President of Human Resources and Labor, overseeing the company’s human resources, benefits and compensation, recruitment, and environmental health and safety teams.

Industry Says Goodbye To Walter Jarck

Walter Jarck, whose career in the forest products industry spanned 65 years and ranged from logging machinery to engineered wood products, died January 3, surrounded by his children, in North Wilkesboro, NC. He was 92.

Carbotech Acquires Sawquip

Carbotech Group has acquired Sawquip, a manufacturing company specializing in the design and manufacture of sawmill equipment for the primary and secondary breakdown of logs into lumber. This acquisition allows Carbotech Group to add on a new field of expertise, providing customers with innovative new solutions for lumber production. Sawquip’s innovative products include log turners and optimized log infeeds, chipping canters, twin and quad circular saw modules, as well as optimized gangs for controlled shape sawing, among others.

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