Maine’s wood product manufacturing sales increased by 45% in a five-year period. That’s according to a report published in October from the Maine Forest Products Council on the economic contribution of the state’s forest products sector from 2019 to 2024.
Executive director Krysta West says during that period, Maine saw a lot of investment in sawmills, both in the expansion of existing infrastructure and in new facilities that are able to process lower grade lumber that would have previously gone to pulp and paper.
“Everybody was staying home during the pandemic building things. It was a real boom time for that sector of the industry,” West says. “Since then, interest rates and inflation have caught up, and it’s slowed down significantly in that sector as well.”
During that same time period, the state’s pulp and paper industry continued to contract, with paper manufacturing sales falling by 41%.
West says despite the instability, the overall economic contribution of Maine’s forest product sector is still $8.3 billion, and the industry is actively trying to diversify.