CONTINUING COVERAGE
Recent increases in metro Atlanta home building have financial ripple effects on Georgians far from construction sites. From the local Home Depot to carpet mills and beyond, people are feeding off the growth. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution helped decipher the impact when the economy crumbled. We’re doing the same as growth returns. Today: how renewed homebuilding in metro Atlanta creates jobs tied to timber in rural Georgia.
The rattle and roar of the machines make earplugs necessary and conversation impossible.
Log after log is scraped of bark, scanned by computers and cut by robotic saws into boards of different sizes. Workers move along the line checking boards as they pile up in bins to await shipment.
The daylong din at the at the Interfor saw mill, about 170 miles southeast of Atlanta, is the sound of renewal for many of the 85 employees there.
It’s also an echo of the nascent housing recovery, which spreads into a wide array of businesses - from the saw mills and brick factories that supply raw materials to the lenders and law firms at the other end of the sales chain.
Georgia’s massive, $15 billion-a-year timber industry was hit hard when housing went over the cliff in 2007 or so. Some mills closed and others cut back. At the Nunez mill, workers are still working reduced schedules — a week off, a week on with shorter hours.
“It’s tough,” said Rusty Moore, 43, a supervisor at the mill. “You have to feed your kids. You got to watch what you spend, buy only what you need. The new refrigerator, the new washer-dryer – they’ll just have to wait till things pick up.”
Signs of the pick-up are appearing. Interfor, a Vancouver, Canada-based forestry giant, plans to spend $1.8 million on a new kiln at the Nunez plant and $2.8 million at another plant in Baxley, south of Nunez. It's also buying a plant in Thomaston, 50 miles south of Atlanta, and plans to add a second shift there.
INTERACTIVE MAP: See how housing permits have changed in metro Atlanta
Such investments could lead to longer hours, bigger paychecks and more spending at other businesses in those communities.
“We are excited about the upturn,” said Larry Dasher, Baxley-based general manager for Interfor operations. “It would take the pressure off us. You are pinching every penny you can.”
Forestry industry payrolls in Georgia peaked at nearly 68,000 before the housing bust, falling to 43,425 afterward and then slowly starting to rise.
The sector accounts for just under 50,000 people and more than $15 billion annually in business, according to Georgia Tech’s Community Innovation Services group. The impact on the rest of the economy: about 120,000 jobs and $25 million in business - and it was more prior to the recession.
Work at a mill is not easy, but the pay can be good by rural standards – from $30,000 a year to more than double that for experienced workers.
When housing seized up, the Baxley mill, owned at the time by Rayonier, first cut hours, then laid off 58 of 140 workers, said Andy Moore, manager of capital for Interfor, which bought the mill this year.
“Wood use dropped 30 or 40 percent at the mills” in the South, said Brooks Mendell, president of Forisk Consulting. “That is a massive number.”
The pain was intense in small towns and cities where mills are often one of the major employers. It started to ease last year, Mendell said.
“The only way you sell this wood is if people are building houses. And consumption of saw timber is up 10 percent over the past year.”
In metro Atlanta, permits for single-family homes this year is modest – perhaps 11,200, according to Metrostudy. That's less than one-fifth of the 2005 peak, but more than twice the 2009 low. Other markets also report increases.
Adding to demand for Georgia timber are insect problems that has crimped some timber production in western Canada.
While wood products get shipped around the globe, trees are turned into lumber at local mills. So all the Georgia pines that are harvested get processed at the state’s 166 mills, said Nathan McClure, chief forester of the Forest Utilization Department of the Georgia Forestry Commission.
Some of those were closed for a time and others operated at reduced capacity, he said.
“The general trend is certainly upward. There is an opportunity for Georgia to produce much more lumber,” McClure said.
Roughly 40 million “green tons” of trees this year will be harvested and processed, down from 50 million a year during the housing boom, McClure said.
Robert Cochran, 46, who has worked in a saw mill for two decades, is one of two electricians at the Interfor plant in Nunez. He thinks it’s a very good sign that the company is about to add a third electrician. That means the company expects more work for everybody.
The recent downturn was longer than any prior decline, said Jimmy Bush, 50, a crew leader in the mill.
“It’s been seven years where you had to readjust your lifestyle.”
Most of the workers have been in the mill a long time, and a return to stability would be a relief, Bush said.
“My first year out of high school, I was right here and I’ve been right here ever since.”
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