Beetle Plague Spurs Canadians on U.S. Lumber-Mill Buying Spree
(Bloomberg) -- A tiny beetle's two decade rampage across western Canada has hugely impacted the region's timber industry, destroying more than half the harvestable pine in heavily forested British Columbia. Giant forestry firms have headed south as a consequence, buying up sawmills and woodlands across the U.S., as Willem Marx reports. (Source: Bloomberg)
In the 60 years since Bob Jordan III joined his family’s North Carolina sawmill business, he hasn’t seen anything quite like the Canadian invasion of the South’s lumber industry.
“You didn’t have people coming in from the outside -- we never had this before,” Jordan, 82, president of closely held Jordan Lumber & Supply Inc., said about an estimated C$2 billion ($1.62 billion) wave of Canadian investment. “Over 50 percent of the lumber in a certain part of the South is being produced by the Canadian mills.”