Wood Pellets and Other Forestry News 

The wood pellet market appears to be a real boon to the Southeastern forestry industry, adding value to larger trees and providing a market for small trees. This week's Super Six covers this emerging market and other U.S. forestry news. 

• In an opinion piece in The State newspaper in Columbia, SC, Tom Straka, a forestry professor at Clemson University, states that wood pellet mills provide a market for wood waste (much of it left over from large trees as they are cut into lumber) and non-merchantable small trees. 

• A USDA blog published this week also gives a big thumbs up to the Southeast's wood pellet industry, noting that an industry that can reduce greenhouse gas emissions, increase forest growth, and create jobs sounds too good to be true, but that is the reality of the emerging wood pellets market in the southern United States.

• More good news for the Southeastern logging industry—The Meridian Star reports that Weyerhaeuser's Philadelphia, MS, lumber mill continues its planned, 10-month, $57 million expansion to modernize its facility. 

• In yet another indicator of a bullish Southeastern forestry industry, Interfor, the world's fourth largest lumber manufacturer, has added 50 new jobs at its Thomaston Sawmill in Georgia, according to the Thomaston Times.

• The USDA announced this week that incentives will resume this summer for farmers, ranchers and forest landowners interested in growing and harvesting biomass for renewable energy, according to an article shared by the Society of American Foresters.

• As the manufacturer of technologically-advanced Primex forestry tires, we're always interested in technologies that add efficiencies to logging operations. So we end this week's Super Six with a product featured on the Society of American Foresters website -- a laser-based solution from Lasertech that can penetrate through foliage to obtain tree measurements. 

Speaking of our Primex forestry tires, which have very strong marketshare in the U.S. logging industry, please read this earlier Hub story on how Primex forestry flotation tires help loggers have a light touch in the woods.