BALTIMORE — Cambium has acquired Forward Forestry, a network of arborists and tree care companies selling logs in the U.S. With this deal, Cambium will add arborists to its sustainable supply chain OS, increase the supply of fallen trees into its supply chain to boost the production of Carbon Smart Wood and add key logistics experience to the team. 

Carbon Smart Wood is a carbon-negative building material made by upcycling fallen trees instead of cutting down new ones to create wood products. Carbon Smart Wood is trusted by sustainability leaders like Patagonia, Room & Board, and Steelcase.

“Our work relies on dismantling legacy systems of ineffective wood waste management. Tree Care is a $163B industry that no one talks about. Forward Forestry has been a tremendous leader in showing arborists the value of working with sawmills,” said Ben Christensen, CEO and Co-Founder of Cambium. “Through this acquisition, we can add more source material to our supply chain and ensure our sawmill partners get the highest quality fiber. Ryan, Mike, and Yuval will be key in helping us expand the Cambium supply chain network across North America.”

Typically, trees that fall due to decay, disaster, disease, or development are captured by arborists and sent to the landfill or turned into wood chips. Forward Forestry has been an industry leader in educating arborists about the financial value of turning “trash into cash” by selling fallen trees to sawmills where they can be turned into sustainable building materials to help contractors, furniture suppliers, and corporations meet demands to decarbonize the built environment.

Cambium will expand its arborist network by bringing Forward Forestry’s 80 arborist partners and tree care companies onto Traece, Cambium’s sustainable supply chain software that tracks wood from its source to its final form and provides transparency about carbon impact and the supply chain journey. Arborists can now use Traece to identify the right sawmill partner and sell their inventory with ease, and Cambium will increase revenue by introducing new customers to the platform. With more arborist partners and a greater supply of fallen trees, Cambium will increase its production capacity of Carbon Smart Wood through Traece from three million to six million board feet in the first year.

Forward Forestry has also established relations with large sawmills across the Northeastern U.S. and Canada, expanding Cambium’s geographical footprint and adding strategic players to Cambium’s network of sawmill partners. The Forward Forestry team manages efficient transportation and the handoff of the wood from the arborists to the sawmills through its platform Mill Market, ensuring that they are never putting logs on a truck without an established buyer in place. Cambium will gain logistics expertise and Mill Market will now be powered by Traece.

Forward Forestry’s operations will be fully integrated into the Cambium ecosystem, and all three founders will stay with Cambium and step into new roles. Ryan Glossop, a former developer at Intel, and Yuval Levy, a software developer specializing in UI design, will come on as senior software engineers. Mike Preminger, a forester and ISA-certified arborist, will be Cambium’s new director of business development for supply and will leverage his background to introduce sawmills to Traece.

"This acquisition allows Cambium to significantly enhance their supply of Carbon Smart Wood as there are growing demands to find new ways to decarbonize the world we live in. We're proud to support Cambium in this big step towards bringing innovation and transparency to the $200B lumber industry," said Adrian Fenty of MaC Venture Capital, an investor in Cambium.