March 9, 2020 — 2020 is shaping up much better than 2019, cross your fingers that it continues! Recent improvements in plywood markets have continued. Prices began the year at $323 for our bench-mark product ½” 4-ply CDX and is now $462, a 43% increase...
February 24, 2020 — What a difference a few weeks makes. Since the end of January, plywood commodity markets have very active and moved sharply upward over the past four weeks. Many of us anticipated that this market move could and would happen at some...
February 17, 2020 — I was thrilled to see so many hardworking Oregonians from across the state at the Timber Unity rally at the Capitol on February 6th. Folks from different communities, different political beliefs and different career backgrounds all came together to express their...
February 10, 2020 — Housing formations continue to outpace housing starts. On a macro-economic level, this means that demand for housing continues to exceed the available housing inventories. For those looking for housing this means that housing prices and rents continue to rise and will...
February 3, 2020 — Freres Lumber is the first U.S. company to install and operate the Taihei Horizontal Plywood Press Model P25-AB, a horizontal hot press for laminating plywood after the gluing and prepressing processes. In keeping with our history as a leader in early...
January 27, 2020 — January 2020 has seen decent trading so far. The first full two weeks of the month were relatively strong sales weeks for us, which is encouraging. As usual, many people are buying a little bit of wood, but no one is...
January 24, 2020 — Thanksgiving of last year Freres Lumber was subject to a ransomware attack which shutdown key systems and caused significant disruptions. Luckily, we were able to bring key systems back online within three weeks and recover information that was important for business...
January 13, 2020 — The New Year has shown little improvement in the plywood market since December. Plywood sales are still lackluster. It leaves one wondering where the market disappeared to. Have imports and increased OSB capacity really killed off a healthy panel market? Are...
December 27, 2019 — As a “part 2” discussion on robots in the wood products industry, I’d like to dive in to how robots have long been helpful in labor-intensive positions dealing with higher-value products; in our case, this applies to patching for visual grade...
December 23, 2019 — Commodity plywood markets are unyielding, limping into the holiday weeks with few changes in prices or in the marketplace. Customers seem content to stay the course—that is, buy their needs, only. No changes really. Prices are trading in a very narrow and low range. There...