• By CHRIS ALDRIDGE
• Kentucky Agricultural News

Nearly half of the state of Kentucky is covered by 12.4 million acres of forests that supply everything from 200-pound railroad ties to ice cream sticks that barely register on a scale at 0.05 ounces.

To mark the importance of wood products to Kentucky’s economy, the week of Oct. 18-24 will be recognized as Forest Products Week in the Commonwealth. The industry generates an economic impact of about $13.2 billion for the state and supplies nearly 53,000 jobs.

Railroad ties are among the products made by BPM Lumber, a high-tech sawmill in London, Kentucky. BPM has 100 employees at its London facility and 60 more at three smaller mills in Leslie and Letcher counties.

“Our production is down a little bit,” said London Plant Manger Matthew Begley, naming the coronavirus pandemic as one of the reasons. “We have the capacity to produce about 70 million board feet of lumber (per year), but we’re on pace to do about half of that this year.”

In addition to grade lumber and railroad ties, BPM also makes hardwood flooring; pallets; cabinetry, molding, and millwork pieces; and it supplies wood chips to make paper products.

Kentucky is one of the leading producers of hardwood forest products in the South, exporting $336 million in wood products last year, which ranked among the state’s top 10 agricultural exports.

BPM started in 1995 in Whitesburg, Kentucky, when General Manager Marty Cornett purchased Begley Lumber. He moved the company’s headquarters to London, where hardwood lumber is sawed, kiln dried, and shipped all over the country and the world, including Canada, China, and Europe.

“We (Kentucky’s wood industry) have been overshadowed by the coal industry, but that’s changing a lot, especially in the last few years,” Begley said. “We’ve been seeing less coal produced, and it has given people the opportunity to log.

“We log within a 150-mile radius from the main sawmill in London. We pride ourselves in trying to make the best lumber we can. We have a lot of technology and optimization to make lumber.”

Begley was a guest panelist Sept. 10 in the seventh of eight LAND (Linking Agriculture for Networking & Development) forums spotlighting agriculture-related businesses in the Appalachian region of Kentucky.

“A lot of guys that we buy logs from own a little small farm,” he said. “They have a little wood lot they’re going to log. So it’s a perfect mix of manufacturing and agriculture.”

BPM Sales Manager Tony Love said “a big seller” for the company is the certification it earned from the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) ensuring that its wood products come from responsibly managed forests.

“Not a lot of mills can offer that,” Love said of the certification.

Cornett said he built BPM’s success on a commitment to three things: its employees, customers, and the environment.

“We produce, cut, and sell eight to 10 different hardwood species from the Appalachian area,” Love said. “It’s a great product. We try not to cut corners. We want to be the best in the business.”

Smart Wood in Corbin, Kentucky, has also found success in Kentucky’s tree-covered acres. The family-owned company is the world’s leading manufacturer of food-grade wooden sticks. Its flat sticks are used to hold Nestlé ice cream bars.

“They don’t make the ice cream, but they make the ice cream easier to eat,” said Tim Hughes, the Kentucky Department of Agriculture’s senior trade advisor who moderates the LAND forums.

Smart Wood, a 92-year-old French company, also makes wooden skewers and coffee stirrers. It started by manufacturing wooden articles for shoes in 1928 in Saint-Sauveur, France.

Smart Wood began making wooden sticks at the end of World War II in 1945. Three years ago this month, the ribbon was cut on its first U.S factory in Corbin. Patricia Philpot, a log buyer who represented Smart Wood during the Appalachian LAND forum, said the company chose to build its first factory outside Europe in southeastern Kentucky to be close to a source of beech wood. Smart Wood bought $1.3 million worth of beech logs last year from Kentucky and three other states.

The Corbin factory’s 83 employees churn out 2 million ice cream sticks per day for Nestlé, the largest food company in the world based in Switzerland.

“About half of Kentucky’s land mass is trees,” Hughes said. “That’s a revenue generator for our farmers.”