Idaho Forest Group’s New Lumberton, Mississippi Sawmill Nearing Completion

In December of 2020, Idaho Forest Group announced that it was making a $120 million investment to build a green site sawmill on 174-acres in Lumberton, Mississippi. The project is now nearing completion, and the company is anticipating that the mill will be functional sometime in May or June of this year. When fully operational, the mill will produce a variety of wood products and convert as many as 1.5 million tons of southern yellow pine timber harvest from the region.

According to Todd Jackson, Executive VP of Hattiesburg’s Area Development Partnership, some on-site buildings are complete with others almost finished. The radial crane, designed for offloading tree-length logs from trucks, has been erected and crews have been testing systems as some logs are already being delivered to the site. And a vendor open house for the company’s suppliers will be held at the end of April.

Jackson noted that Idaho Forest Group has said that it intends to hire within the region and will not be transferring employees from other company sites. “We all know that the key to providing a good lifestyle for your family is the ability to have a quality good-paying job,” Jackson said. To date nearly 100 of the expected 130 positions have been already filled.

The new mill is located on Old Highway 11, near a residential area. A bit of concern for local residents as the company is anticipating that 265 trucks will be accessing the facility every weekday, either to bring logs for processing or transporting outbound residual chips and finished lumber products.

To that end, Idaho Forest Group is working with local and state partners to design and construct roadway upgrades to increase public safety for traffic entering and leaving the sawmill, with more details to come, according to the company website.