Natchez, MS–The Southwestern Hardwood Manufacturers Club recently gathered at the Grand Hotel, located here, for their annual roundtable business meeting, which was followed by an open bar, music, a crawfish boil, or an optional steak if you were a little skittish.
The gathering was well attended with approximately 80 people at the business meeting and almost twice that number at the crawfish boil with wives and significant others attending.
Everyone expressed a positive attitude regarding strong demand for Hardwood lumber and industrial products, such as railroad ties, flooring, pallets, mats, etc. As a result of strong demand, Hardwood market prices have continued to increase and it’s difficult to say when demand and prices will level off.
Log supply is reported as less than adequate, but with the southeast experiencing wet weather and the beginning of hurricane season, it will be some time before mills are comfortable with their log inventories. Equipment manufacturers are all busy with some booked out for a year.
As for problems, for the mills right now labor is without a doubt the number one issue and that goes from logging crews, sawmills, flooring plants, trucking, and it’s a problem in virtually every industry. Finding employees, much less employees that can pass a drug test was a repeated concern. There were a few sawmills at the SWHMC meeting that were running more than one shift, but most were running 40 hours a week because they simply can’t find enough employees. The exception regarding running more than one shift was the flooring plants but they, too, are having difficulty finding enough employees.
A comment more than one mill owner expressed was: “how do you find enough employees to work when the government is paying people all these subsidies for people to stay at home?”
One mill spokesman in Alabama said, “I’ve been in this industry for 49 years and I’ve never seen anything like this…I’ve never seen a lumber market this good, so let’s just enjoy the ride!
Learn more about this organization by visiting www.swhmc.com.
