Timber Processing

Left to right, Dan Shell, senior editor of Timber Processing magazine, presents the 2026 Timber Processing Person of the Year Award to Steve Swanson, Chairman of Swanson Group. “The reports of my death are greatly exaggerated,” Mark Twain once said. You can say the same for the Northwest sawmill and engineered wood products manufacturing industry, as exemplified during the Timber Processing & Energy Expo (TP&EE) held September 23-25 at the Portland Exposition Center in Portland, Ore.

The U.S. Forest Service and U.S. Endowment for Forestry and Communities have announced the Beta launch of the Forestry Analytics for Carbon Tracking (FACT) platform, a science-based platform that addresses the growing challenge and need for reliable forest sector carbon data at no cost to users. Landowners and businesses face increasing pressure to report and communicate carbon information, but existing data can be fragmented, inconsistent, and costly to aggregate.

The U.S. Endowment for Forestry and Communities (the Endowment) has awarded $500,000 to CTrees and Spatial Informatics Group (SIG) through its Technology Solutions to Improve Forest Health and Forest Management initiative. CTrees will receive $300,000 to develop Forest Asset Intelligence: The Wood Triangle, while Spatial Informatics Group will receive $200,000 to develop and deploy the Planscape Bioeconomy Module.

TrueSight is a coordinated suite of hardware and software products designed to bring geometric scanning and color vision together throughout the sawmill. The system provides co-registered color images and geometric profiles that optimization integrators can use to support defect detection, grading, cutting, and sorting decisions. JoeScan rolled out its new TrueSight sawmill vision system at the Timber Processing & Energy Expo, September 23-25, 2026, in Portland, Ore.

IMALPAL Group has named Travis McDonald Vice President of Business Development for North America, where he will focus on expanding the company’s presence and bringing its European-developed wood processing and residual utilization technologies. “Everybody knows the issue with all the new sawmills and the volume coming out in the U.S. South,” McDonald says. “If you’ve got a volume of lumber, you’ve got a volume of residuals.

Comact, a global leader in high-performance OEM wood processing technologies, has announced the launch of Comact Cutting Solutions, bringing together Smith Sawmill Service, Oleson Saw Technology, Checkmate Precision Cutting Tools, and the proprietary BLADE brand under a common organizational identity. Customers will continue to work with these established brands as they do today, with each maintaining its unique identity, expertise, products, and customer relationships.

Minda and one of France’s leading timber construction companies are currently carrying out an extraordinary project: For Arbonis, a VINCI Group company, a fully automated production line is being built in Chemillé-en-Anjou to manufacture straight glued laminated timber and large-format curved beams. For more than 40 years, Arbonis has been a recognized market leader in timber construction, supporting construction projects from planning to completion.

Matt Duprey has been promoted to Chief White Pine Officer of Hancock Lumber, effective immediately, according to an announcement by the mill company. This new role reflects both his remarkable career journey and his continued impact on the Hancock eastern white pine business and the industry at large. A part of Hancock since 1994, Duprey joined the sawmills after earning his Forestry and Wood Science + Technology degree.

A Washington, D.C.-based startup with roots in aerospace, defense and autonomous-vehicle technology has opened its first sawmill in northeast Miss., betting more than $15 million that a faster, tech-driven approach to milling can help close what its founders call America’s “lumber manufacturing deficit.” The Lumber Manufactory LLC held a ribbon-cutting ceremony for its New Albany, Miss. sawmill inside the former Stratford Furniture building on August 13.

Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins announced the U.S. Forest Service has filed a proposed rule to rescind in its entirety the national 2001 Roadless Area Conservation Rule, a one-size-fits-all restriction that has frustrated land managers and served as a barrier to wildfire risk reduction work across large swaths of America’s national forests.