Page 14 - Tree Line - North Carolina Forestry Association - Second Quarter 2023

Interviewees Adam Reed, Mill Manager, and Pete Hancock, Timberlands Manager, Roseburg Forest Products
Roseburg Forest Products:
Moving East for New Business Opportunities
By Amanda Murphy, Director of Communications and Kat Peters, Communications Intern
We sat down with Pete Hancock to talk about the company’s Southeast operations and the new sawmill under construction in Weldon, NC. The facility, called Roanoke Valley Lumber, will process Southern yellow pine logs and include green lumber operations, lumber drying, and a planer mill.
The facility will be constructed in two phases, with the first phase supporting
up to 300 million board feet per year of lumber drying capacity. The second phase will increase the total capacity to 500 million board feet per year. The NCFA team had a chance to visit the Weldon construction site and pay our first visit to a sawmill operation built on a completely new site.
Q: Tell me about yourself. Our records show you’ve been an
NCFA member since 2017.
A: Roseburg joined the NCFA in 2017, shortly after they purchased the
initial 158,000-acre land acquisition in the Southeast, spanning Virginia and North Carolina. This land package was Roseburg’s first timberlands acquisition in the Southeast. I came on board in the middle of 2018 as timberlands manager and was the first team member here for this Southeastern operation.
Roseburg historically had timberland operations in California and Oregon. In 2017, the company executed a disposition plan for the California timberlands and reallocated those assets to North Carolina and Virginia to diversify and support future growth. I spent my entire career
in the footprint that Roseburg operates now. I graduated from Virginia Tech with a degree in Forestry, went to work at International Paper in Southside Virginia, and am now responsible for some of the
12 ncforestry.org / SECOND QUARTER 2023