HARVESTING PROFITS: A FIRM WITH ROOTS IN CHARLOTTE BOASTS THE BIGGEST TIMBER AND LAND-MANAGEMENT BUSINESS IN THE NATION, OVERSEEING MORE THAN 6 MILLION ACRES.

• Author: Wanbauch, Taylor
• Position: NC TREND: Forestry

There's an age-old saying: "Money doesn't grow on trees." Well, in the business of timber management and land-sales services, it gets pretty darn close, with the biggest in the business based out of Charlotte. American Forest Management has more than 1,200 clients, oversees more than 6 million acres and has coordinated land transactions topping $3 billion.

Bartow "Bo" Shaw Jr. started the company in Sumter, S.C., in 1966 and expanded to Charlotte in 2001 when he bought a larger rival, Canal Forest Resources. The latter company, one of the Carolinas' biggest landowners, was run by the Wall family for decades. Its sale came four years after the death of CEO Craig Wall Jr.

In 2007, AFM bought Sustainable Forestry Technologies Inc., which offered forestry services to private landowners and large timberland-investment organizations, from International Paper Co. Buoyed by acquisitions, AFM has grown from 40 employees in 2000 to more than 260 today, spread across 49 offices in 17 states. Turning land into money is the company's specialty, says CEO Andy Ferguson, a 28-year forestry veteran who joined Canal in 1999.

The company advises clients on everything from the best crop to grow to the premium time to harvest trees.

The forest industry is the ultimate long-term business. It typically takes three to four decades to grow and harvest trees, depending on the type of tree and the conditions of the region. Forestry is big in North Carolina, which has 18.1 million acres of timberland. In 2016, the state's forestry sector had a total economic contribution of $32.7 billion supporting about 150,000 full-and part-time jobs paying on average about $50,000, according to a study from N.C. State University's Forestry &. Environmental Resources Department.

Although private-land ownership and family forests date to the 18th century, investment in timberland became more mainstream starting in the late 1980s, Ferguson says. While the value of timber has increased over the years, the industry was hit hard by the 2007-09 recession when housing starts collapsed to the lowest levels in decades. Less demand caused wood prices to drop by nearly half from early 2006 to 2011, according to Dennis Hazel, an N.C. State forestry professor. Since then, prices have shot higher amid lots of volatility as housing demand ebbs and flows.

Many AFM clients are investment managers in big cities such as Atlanta and Boston, along with high net-worth individuals. The company's bread and...