Timber for the Hometown Market.

• Author: SWAGEL, WILL
• Position: Brief Article

The Alaska timber industry, after enjoying a bull market into the early 1990s, is fighting for survival a decade later. The numbers tell the tale.

Timber employment statewide has dropped by 65 percent. The amount of timber harvested annually in Alaska has declined from about 900 mmbf (million board feet) to 282 mmbf today.

Environmentalists have taken the brunt of the criticism for crippling the industry by tying up timber sales in litigation. But not all industry woes have a home-grown origin. In the earlier part of the 1990s, new competition from New Zealand, Chile and other countries emerged from throughout the Pacific Rim, targeted at the sama Japanese customers Alaskans courted. Then the "Asian flu" hit the Japanese, Taiwanese and other Far East economies, sharply curtailing demand for both Alaska round logs and processed wood products.

Due to the soft overseas markets, Alaskan timber firms have begun to pay more attention to in-state Railbelt customers, who use an estimated 80 mmbf to 90 mmbf annually. Timber experts say nearly all of that has traditionally been imported to Alaska.

"What may be the most exciting news this year (for the timber industry) is down at Anchor Point," says Jack Phelps, the executive director of the Alaska Forest Association. "Kevin Gates opened a mill down there called Alaskan Spruce Products. They have the only production-sized (drying) kiln in the state. They are producing dressed, grade-stamped lumber from white spruce. You can walk into the Home Depot in Anchorage and buy it off the shelves. That's a major breakthrough!"

Dressed, Dried and Delivered

Alaska Spruce Products is slated to cut 12 mmbf of white spruce this year for the Southcentral market, says Mill Manager Bernie Brown. The mill is located between Anchor Point and Ninilchik.

This firm does it all-logging private and Native lands, mostly on the Kenai Peninsula, then planing and drying the wood and finally transporting the product to market.

Besides being in the Anchorage Home Depot store for the better part of the last year, Alaska Spruce lumber is also delivered to Arctic Building Sources in Anchorage, a lumberyard in Bethel, Homestead Supply in Glennallen and six Spenard Builders Supply stores (Anchorage, Eagle River, Homer, Kenai, Soldotna and Wasilla).

Brown says Alaska Spruce's supply is steady for their year-old mill, a situation not easily enjoyed by other large sawmills in the state. And Alaska Spruce's in-state share of the market may...