Forest Products

Alabama forests are equal to the size of Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island, New Hampshire and Delaware combined, which is about 28.3 billion cubic feet of standing timber.

No wonder, with 850 companies statewide, forestry is a leading manufacturing sector, producing $15 billion in products each year. The industry directly employs 70,000, with an annual payroll of $2.2 billion.

Click here for a map showing concentration of Alabama's forestry companies.

The future is even brighter as Alabama forests are not only replenishing at a rapid clip, but growing in acreage. Timber expansion is outpacing removals by 23 percent. Timberlands have increased by 650,000 acres in the past 20 years and by 1.1 million acres since 1978.

Timberland diversity includes hardwoods (45 percent); pine (41 percent); and mixed pine and hardwoods (14 percent.)

Georgia-Pacific

Georgia-Pacific –  one of the world’s leading manufacturers and marketers of building products, tissue, packaging, paper, cellulose and related chemicals – has nine manufacturing facilities in Alabama, including a treated lumber sales office in Montgomery, and wood and fiber supply offices at Brewton and Naheola.

More than 2,100 employees work for Georgia-Pacific’s Alabama operations, which generated about $190 million in employee wages and benefits in 2010.

Three of the company’s largest facilities operate in the state:

• The consumer products mill at Naheola (Choctaw County) makes several consumer tissue brands, including Quilted Northern® and Angel Soft® bath tissue. 
• The containerboard mill at Brewton (Escambia County) makes paper used in corrugated boxes and other packaging materials.
• The Alabama River Cellulose mill in Perdue Hill (Monroe County) makes pulp used in paper products and products requiring absorbent qualities.

Georgia Pacific operates several building products sites making Southern pine plywood, lumber and engineered wood products for residential and commercial construction. A corrugated box plant in Huntsville manufactures packaging for local and national customers.

Georgia-Pacific is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Koch Industries, a privately-owned company headquartered in Wichita, Kan.  Koch companies and subsidiaries employ more than 70,000 people worldwide. In Alabama, Koch companies employ more than 2,800 people directly and support 13,700 Alabama jobs in total.

Boatright Companies

A veteran player in the sales and distribution of railroad crossties, Birmingham-based Boatright Companies delved into the manufacturing side of the business in 2008 with the purchase of Seaman Timber in nearby Montevallo.

The 100-acre site makes 75 million crossties a year at the $40 million facility that employs 200. Customers include Norfolk Southern, CSX and several short-line railroads. Exports most recently totaled $2 million.

Boatright looks to expand further with construction under way for a new cross-tie factory in Clanton some 20 miles south on Interstate 65.

Kimberly Clark 

One of the world’s leaders in paper products, Kimberly Clark employs 600 in Mobile to manufacture tissue and paper towel products under the Scott and Kleenex brands, and sold to businesses through the company’s K-C Professional unit. The company has invested more than $100 million over the last decade in the manufacturing facility, which originally dates to the 1930s.

Fast Facts

• Alabama ranks second in the United States in pulp production and No. 3 in paper production.

• Forest products are second only to coal as the leading export commodity at the Port of Mobile.

• Exports of forest products average 1.2 million tons annually.

• More than 90 percent of Alabama woodlands are privately owned.

• Alabama sports 1,400 tree farms with 2.2 million acres certified under the Tree Farm program.

• Alabama is No. 7 nationally in lumber production and eighth in wood panel production.

Statistics courtesy of Alabama Forestry Association