Northern Hardwoods Lumber Co. – Sawmilling In The Copper Country
Northern Hardwoods Lumber Company, LLC was founded in Atlantic Mine, MI, in 1968 and has been wholly owned by JM Longyear since 2015.
Cody Meier, a controller with Northern Hardwoods for nine years, explained the company’s past. “It was originally built by a mining company. This region of the Upper Peninsula has a lot of mining history and when mines were winding down in the 1960’s, the companies were looking for another way to get into using natural resources and that is why this mill was built.”
Northern Hardwoods sits on 135 acres, some of which is undeveloped land. The area, referred to as “the copper country,” has a rich mining history tied not only to Northern Hardwoods but to Longyear as well. “150 years ago,” stated Sam Messina, general manager of Northern Hardwoods, “John Munro Longyear was a land surveyor who really had a niche for finding elements such as copper, iron, and nickel for mining companies in the Upper Peninsula and Minnesota. Today, we are primarily invested in the United States (mostly the Upper Peninsula), but we do have a little going on logging-wise in Canada. We invest in companies in various industries and have four core business areas. We have lumber manufacturing along with JML Forestry, which includes harvesting and trucking. Our forestry group provides over half of the sawlogs that we use at Northern Hardwoods, and they also provide pulp wood for paper mills. Additionally, we have a medical device group called Able Medical Devices and some real estate holdings around Marquette, MI.”
The tree species that is most prevalent in the area, Meier listed, is Hard Maple. “I would say the brightness of the White Hard Maple is superior in the Upper Peninsula. We market Ultra White, Northern White and White Paint Grade Hard Maple among our color sorts, and 4/4 is our most common thickness.” Also noted by Meier, they handle Red Leaf Soft Maple, Red and White Oak, Birch, Ash, Basswood and Cherry. Select & Better, rift and quarter sawn White Oak is a “niche” for them. “It does well for us,” he added.
Northern Hardwoods’ Sales Manager, Ryan Peterson, who has been with the company since 2015, stated that “high yielding, appearance grade lumber is what Northern Hardwoods has always been known for. While our main focus is Hard Maple, due to the make up of our woods, we have excellent Red Leaf Maple, Northern Red Oak and Birch that all come out of the local forests in the Upper Peninsula.”
In addition to 4/4, they can produce 5/4, 6/4 and 8/4 thicknesses. For value added products, Northern Hardwoods can “surface two sides, rip-to-width, and offer specific width sorts,” stated Meier. Northern also purchases non-native species like Walnut, White Oak and Poplar, primarily green, to be kiln dried. Peterson stated, “The inclusion of items not grown in the local Upper Peninsula forests are vital to being able to fully service our manufacturing customers, but primarily our distribution customers.”
Northern Hardwoods ships lumber throughout North America with a small number of exports. Most customers are in the Midwest. Primary markets include flooring, distribution, and cabinet and furniture manufacturers. The company also operates a distribution center in Niles, MI, to provide expedited service to customers in Southern Michigan, Indiana, Chicago and Southeast Wisconsin. “Northern Hardwoods is blessed to be located in the heart of solid Hard Maple gym floor country, and our lumber can be found often in NCAA, NBA and high school gymnasiums through a number of our partner customers,” according to Peterson.
Northern Hardwoods inventories approximately 1.5 million board feet of kiln-dried inventory ready to ship while the annual production of the sawmill is “around 20 million,” as noted by Meier.
Longyear supplies Northern Hardwoods with half of the logs they cut and has their own logging crews and foresters.
Even though they do not own any timberland, Longyear manages thousands of acres of timberlands and “bids on private and government stumpage sales to supply us,” said Meier.
“Having Longyear as an owner has allowed us to be able to continue to invest in equipment upgrades in down markets,” stated Meier. Recently, they upgraded the planer from “an 18-inch-wide Newman planer to a 24-inch, installed an upsized state-of-the-art biomass boiler with power generation, and implemented automated lumber grading on the kiln dried side.”
Their total kiln-capacity is approximately 15 million board feet annually. “Around 275,000 board feet fits in the kilns, and around 600,000 board feet fits in the pre-dryer,” stated Meier.
They have five dry kilns, two by SII Dry Kilns installed in 2016 and 2019, and others by Irvington-Moore and Imrie Dry Kiln Co.
Meier listed the rest of their equipment, starting with their Nicholson ring debarker. Primary breakdown of the logs begins with a double cut head rig and a single cut head rig, both by
McDonough Manufacturing with USNR optimizers. One is a five-foot double cut while the other is a six-foot single cut. “We normally send our bigger logs towards the six-footer because it’s got more power,” Meier said. Their carriages are by Cleereman Industries, and they have a gang saw by Ligna Machinery Inc. “The waste is fed towards a Precision Husky Corporation chipper,” he continued, “and a HEMCO edger also with USNR optimization. Next, is the AOH trimmer and an ALH bin sorter with 26 bins.”
A significant investment for Northen Hardwoods is an artificial intelligence Neural Grader from Fordaq, a European manufacturer, that went live in early 2025. “We taught it for over a year and a half to get it to where it is today,” noted Meier. “The neural grader removed the grading bottleneck in our processing,” added Messina, and we were able to “retain the graders that were displaced, putting them in other skilled positions throughout the mill.”
The automated grading assists them in achieving
higher consistency which is something those at Northern Hardwoods pride themselves on. Northern Hardwoods uses NHLA grade rules.
This Neural Grader, has, according to Messina, “worked out so well that we are strongly considering adding a grader on the green lumber side.”
According to Peterson, “The addition of the Neural Grader, along with the dedication of the Northern operations team and Longyear’s dedication to advancing its manufacturing capabilities, will ensure that our customers continue to be provided with the highest quality lumber for decades to come.”
A new, 510 HP boiler by Messersmith Manufacturing Inc. feeds a turbine supplied by NLine Energy, which was fully functional by November 2025. The
turbine “helps offset a third to half of our power,” explained Meier. Their boiler can be fed with wood waste, sawdust, bark, or chips. They are using sawdust, as their bark and chips have a market.
Meier added that the Messersmith boiler with the turbine was “made possible with grants from the USDA Wood Innovation Grant, the Department of Energy, and the Michigan Economic Development
Corporation.”
Including Meier, Messina and Peterson, Ryan LaPorte is the operations manager. There are around one hundred employees at the sawmill operating in two 40-hour shifts.
Messina commented on the company’s retention, stating, “We have several employees that have worked here for over 30 years.”
Northern Hardwoods Lumber Company LLC is a member of the National Hardwood Lumber Association, the Indiana Hardwood Lumbermen’s Association, the Wood Component Manufacturers Association, the Lake States Lumber Association, the Great Lakes Kiln-Drying Association, the Michigan Association of Timbermen and the North American Building Material Distributors Association.
For more information, visit northernhardwoods.com.
