Wood: Renewable and versatile
Idaho’s forestry professionals respect the resource they work with
Idaho’s forestry professionals respect the resource they work with. In fact, once a log reaches a mill, there is virtually no waste. Lumber produced at a sawmill can be remanufactured into higher value products such as windows, doors or engineered wood products like trusses and beams. Logs can be peeled and used for plywood and veneer or shaped to create fence posts, power poles and railroad ties. Smaller trees are often chipped to make particleboard. Even the waste from a sawmill is valuable, the sawdust, shavings and wood chips are used to make paper as well as livestock bedding, landscape bark and as an energy source
Types of Wood Products From Idaho
- Lumber and other structural building products such as dimensional lumber, solid beams, laminated beams, shingles, joists, laminated veneer lumber, finger-jointed lumber and engineered wood products.
- Millwork used for doors, windows, cabinets, furniture, siding, flooring, moldings, fencing, shipping pallets.
- Panel products such as plywood, particleboard and hardboard.
- Posts, poles and timbers such as utility poles, house logs, fence posts, pilings, treated timbers, cross-arms and railroad ties.
- Wood composite products such as siding, roofing, medium-density fiberboard and molding.
- Pulp and paper products from wood fiber including packaging for food and products, newsprint, bathroom and facial tissue and paper toweling.
Idaho’s Forest Products Manufacturers
The great diversity of commercial tree species in Idaho produces a wide array of products that we use everyday. Over 200 forest product manufacturing and wholesaling businesses were listed in Idaho in 2017. Idaho has dozens of sawmills; particleboard, clean chips, pulp and paper, bioenergy, and bark/mulch products producers; pole, log furniture and firewood producers; log home manufacturers; cedar products mills and plywood/veneer facilities.
Click here to view a map of the wood products facilities in Idaho, read reports about Idaho forestry and more from the Bureau of Business and Economics Research from the University of Montana.
Production location
Wood products can be produced anywhere, but common sense and a competitive advantage encourages production facilities to locate near Idaho’s forest resource. Most of state’s tree harvests comes from counties in Northern Idaho. Most of the production facilities are also located in that region.
FOREST FACT: Total sales of wood products, including pulp and paper, manufactured in Idaho were estimated to be $2.34 billion in 2017.
Papermaking
Papermaking is important to Idaho with paper products accounting for nearly half of all forest products sales in the state. Clearwater Paper Corporation in Lewiston, Idaho is a major paper manufacturer in the state. Watch these videos about making pulp, paperboard and tissue products at Clearwater. .
Pulp
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See how Clearwater Papers turns wood chips and sawdust into pulp, the main ingredient used to make the many paper products we all use every day. Click here to watch. |
Paperboard
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Paperboard is the material used to make folded cartons, liquid packaging, paper cups and plates and printing paper. It needs to be strong, uniform and clean. This video shows the process of turning pulp into products we use every day. Click here to watch. |
Tissue paper
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Most people know that paper products come from trees. This video shows the technology, machinery and people-power Clearwater Paper to turn wood pulp into paper towels, facial tissues, napkins and bathroom tissue. It’s a fast, safe, efficient and fine-tuned process. Click here to watch. |