The American South Is Building Sawmills Faster Than It Can Fill Them

SEATTLE (Scrap Monster): American sawmilling is adding capacity faster than it is using it, with 2.1 billion board feet due in the South by 2028, net of every closure already announced. That is according to Forisk, the forest industry consultancy, which tracks more than 2,350 North American mills and logged fifteen sawmill projects in the third quarter alone.

“For months, we searched for a buyer who could continue operating the mill in Montrose, but we were unable to secure one,” Jim Neiman said, with the president of the fourth-generation family company putting Colorado’s largest sawmill on 60 days’ notice this month. Twain Lumber met the opposite condition in Virginia, buying a mill that had been idle since 2024 and promising 74 jobs there.

Twelve of the fifteen projects added capacity, and the three that took it out were all Canadian, with Canfor closing Fox Creek in Alberta for good and Western Forest Products holding Cowichan Bay in British Columbia down since May. Canadian producers have worked both sides of that trade for a decade, and West Fraser shut down 100 Mile House in British Columbia last year while expanding its Henderson facility in Texas.

American wood product mills operated at 71.9 per cent of capacity last year, according to the Federal Reserve’s annual series, down from 82.5 per cent in 2022. The 2009 trough of 50.4 per cent remains the worst reading in the fifty-four years the Board has published the measure.

The University of Georgia’s reading of the Forisk database puts southern sawmill utilisation at 85 per cent in 2021 and 74 per cent in 2024, with Southern Ag Today putting the 2024 figure a point higher in a later edition. Regional capacity passed 28.4 billion board feet in the same year.

North American softwood lumber capacity fell 2 per cent in 2025, from 74 billion board feet to 73, as firms shut mills in every major region, Forisk reported in its first-quarter research. Lumber prices fell 8 per cent over the same year, and American housing starts slipped 1 per cent.

Capacity has climbed every year since 2021, from an index of 122.1 to 137.4, putting American wood manufacturing back to where it stood in 2010. Production has not followed, rising 1 per cent in the March quarter of 2026 but sitting 4 per cent below a year earlier on the Western Wood Products Association figures Forisk publishes.

“There is more than ample supply out there on the landscape,” Tom Schultz said, with the Forest Service chief telling a House Natural Resources subcommittee on 5 June that markets rather than trees are the brake on American wood supply. He counted national forests as 5 per cent of the raw material the country consumes.

Forisk’s county-level work on growth against drain names Virginia as one of the places forecast to grow more pine than the mills take out through 2029, alongside northern Mississippi and northern North Carolina. That arithmetic sits behind the Virginia restart, where a mill drawing 100 miles from Martinsville reaches into North Carolina as well.

The ten largest North American lumber firms held 47 per cent of continental capacity at the end of 2025, at 34 billion board feet and down 4 per cent on the year. The mills changing hands below that tier are the ones coming out of receivership, and Twain Capital has bought three of them since May 2025.

Southern utilisation for 2025 has not been published, and that figure determines whether the 2.1 billion board feet reads as an investment or an overbuild. Forisk expects the southern balance between pine growth and pine drain to tighten to 1.2 by 2029 as five sawmills, three OSB mills, and three pellet mills come online.

Courtesy: www.woodcentral.com.au