Treated lumber is the commodity residential and light-commercial builders can’t hedge and can’t substitute. Framing lumber just posted its first weekly drop since May, and the supply side keeps adding regional capacity anyway.
On Aug. 24 North Carolina announced that Great Southern Wood-NC Inc., the North Carolina entity of Abbeville, Alabama-based Great Southern Wood Preserving, will invest $40 million to build a lumber treatment plant at Laurinburg-Maxton Airport in Scotland County. Forty-three jobs. It’ll be the company’s 17th treating plant.
Why the site won
Scotland County beat competing sites in South Carolina, Georgia and Virginia. The deciding factors were unglamorous: a WWII-era airport site with room to expand, and rail. The North Carolina Railroad Company committed $600,000 toward the rail spur serving the plant, with CSX named as a partner. For a business that moves green lumber in and treated lumber out by the carload, spur economics are most of the site selection.
The state’s contribution is a $200,000 performance-based grant from the One North Carolina Fund, with no money upfront and payment contingent on hitting job and capital targets, plus a required local match. Scotland County is adding roughly $1.9 million in property tax grants, a figure that comes from press coverage rather than the state release.
What it means for buyers in the Carolinas
Great Southern Wood makes pressure-treated pine under the YellaWood brand and distributes to dealers across 28 states and the District of Columbia. A new treating plant shortens haul distances into the Carolinas and Virginia deck, fence and sill-plate market, which is where a lot of the price volatility gets felt by small builders who buy at the yard rather than on contract.
It doesn’t change the underlying lumber price. Treating capacity and sawmill capacity are different constraints, and the pressure over the past year has been on the milling side. What it does change is lead time and freight for a specific regional market.
Wood is also moving up the structural food chain, not just the deck-and-fence one. Boston’s Bunker Hill Housing redevelopment is putting up a nine-storey, 266-unit building in mass timber and CLT with prefabricated wall panels, which is a different product line but the same forest sector.
Average annual salary for the new positions is $60,827 against a Scotland County average of $49,091. Commerce Secretary Lee Lilley framed the announcement around the state’s forest sector, and Gov. Josh Stein put North Carolina’s forestry industry at $41 billion. Those last figures are the state’s own.