Sawmills Restart Around the U.S.
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Sawmills Restart Around the U.S.DAVENPORT, NY - A sawmill revival, driven by home building recovery and exports to China, is behind increased hiring at timber and lumber manufacturing companies around the country.

Baillie Lumber, headquartered in Hamburg, NY, will reportedly reopen a sawmill in Davenport, NY that has been closed for over four years.

“There’s going to be a gradual increase in demand,” Jeff Lisk, Baillie’s general manager told the Wall St. Journal yesterday. Also driving the hiring: Framing lumber used in construction has risen 46 percent in price over the last year, according to figures from wood industry newsletter "Random Lengths."

Other sawmill reopenings and expansions cited by the Journal paper were Southern Parallel Forest Products Corp., which plans to hire 130 at its Albertville, AL sawmill; a sawmill in Saratoga, WY which reopened in December and hired 80 people; Swanson Group, which rehired 200 of 720 layed off around Eugene, OR during the downturn; and Seneca Sawmill increased hours for its 375 employees in the same area.

In a video below, Jeff Meyer, president, Baillie Lumber Co., and Joe Zbicki, product development manager, discuss Baillie's use of Wood Eye scanning technology.

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