Economic downturn has affected timber business, company

Allegheny Wood Products of Petersburg has sold 55,000 acres to The Forestland Group LLC. The sale represents most of AWP’s approximately 64,000 acres, according to company spokesperson Donna Reckart.

Most of the timberland is in West Virginia, according to Reckart, with scattered parcels lying in Maryland, Pennsylvania and Virginia.

Within West Virginia, most of the acreage is in Preston County.

The sale included AWP’s timberlands in Cheat Canyon but not those in Blackwater Canyon, Reckart said.

Although the sale took place in April — Reckart did not have the date immediately available — it has not yet been recorded at the Preston County courthouse.

Due in part to the long downturn in residential construction, demand for wood products dropped to the point where the family-owned AWP had to sell its land or close its doors, Reckart said.

“We were at about 800 employees probably about two years ago. The last I heard it was approximately 450 employees,” she said. The company most recently laid off 140 in February.

Production a year ago was about 140 million board-feet a year, she continued, and now it’s closer to 70 million.

“We were the last sawmill in the state to have two shifts, and we just finally had to cut back,” she added. “We’re still, I think, one of the very few if not the last to actually be running five days a week.”

The Forestland Group is a Chapel Hill, N.C.-based Timber Investment Management Organization, or TIMO.

According to its Web site, TFG manages 2.7 million acres in 20 states and Costa Rica.

AWP has negotiated a timber supply agreement with TFG, Reckart said, and will continue to buy from private landowners as it did before the sale.

AWP closed two sawmills the past several years, one in Mount Storm, W.Va., and one in North Carolina.

It continues to operate sawmills in Elkins, Kingwood, Princeton and Riverton, W.Va., and in Marble, Pa.

The company expects its cash flow will be sufficient until construction picks up again, Reckart said.