Forest Economic Advisors

Forest Economic Advisors is a forest products market analysis firm based at 298 Great Road in Littleton, Massachusetts, with staff of roughly 26 and satellite presence in Atlanta, Vancouver, Quebec City, Beijing, Lucca, Santiago, Auckland and Melbourne. FEA produces economic forecasts and market analysis covering lumber, timber, panels, engineered wood and mass timber, delivered through subscription publications, a historical and mill-capacity database, custom consulting and conferences. Its partners are regularly quoted on the lumber side of construction cost escalation, including the 2026 finding that lumber escalation held at zero to three percent while steel prices ran up 25 percent. The firm acquired International Wood Markets Group of Vancouver in 2017.

The subscription line-up is where the firm’s coverage is actually drawn. Seven named services run across Lumber, Timber, Panel, Engineered Lumber, Macroeconomy and End-Use, Global Softwood Log and Lumber, and Global Sawmill Cost Benchmarking – the last of those being the one that lets a mill see where it sits on the cost curve against its competitors.

Between the long-form services sit newsletters: the Asia Bulletin, Wood Markets Status and Trends, and Wood Markets Monthly. FEA also runs a price-reporting product, PricePulse, on a separate site.

Special studies have gone after questions the subscription services do not cover. Published work includes The China Book, a report on the rise of OSB and FOSB in China, a study of construction practices in US nonresidential and multifamily buildings, an assessment of Central European beetle and windstorm timber disaster supply, and a fibre supply forecast for the BC Interior.

Delivery is deliberately multi-format. Analysis comes as PDFs, Excel tables and interactive online dashboards, backed by proprietary economic models and what the firm calls the industry’s most comprehensive set of global wood products indicators – thousands of series covering macroeconomics, end-use markets, demand, supply, costs, capacity and prices. Subscribers also get the analysts directly by phone and email, which is the part that does not show up in a sample report.

Coverage is split by sector and by region. Named sector analysts include Paul Jannke on lumber, Brendan Lowney on macroeconomy and housing, Greg Lewis on wood panels, Rocky Goodnow on timber and Art Schmon on engineered lumber and mass timber, with dedicated regional analysts for China, Oceania, Asian panels and South America. The team’s stated experience runs to over 400 combined years.

Three conferences round out the year: the Forest Products Forum, Mass Timber+, and the Global Softwood Log and Lumber Conference. Canadian operations run as FEA Canada out of Port Coquitlam, British Columbia.