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US forest industry forecast to rise 1% per year through 2024: Freedonia

Revenues for the U.S. forestry industry are forecast to rise nearly 1.0 per cent per year through 2024, according to Forestry: United States, a report recently released by Freedonia Focus Reports.

Growing housing starts and expanding paper and paperboard production will boost revenues in the logging and timber tract segments. Increasing severity of wildfires will expand revenues for wildfire prevention and suppression services, thereby expanding the forestry support activities segment. Nonetheless, growth is expected to slow from levels experienced during the historical period, which reflected recession recovery-fuelled gains in housing construction.

Revenues in the dominant logging segments will rise as conventional housing starts increase 1.3 per vent yearly and shipments of wood products expand 3.0 per cent annually through 2024. However, ongoing collection of Chinese tariffs on U.S. wood exports will constrain demand growth in one of the U.S.’s biggest export markets (though this will be partially offset by a January 2020 trade agreement signed committing China to a certain amount of agricultural purchases from the U.S.). In addition, declining demand for newsprint due to falling subscriptions of US newspapers will limit faster growth in logging industry revenues.

These and other key insights are featured in Forestry: United States. This report forecasts to 2024 U.S. forestry revenues in nominal U.S. dollars. Total revenues are segmented by activity in terms of:

• logging
• support activities
• timber tract operations
• forest products and nurseries

To illustrate historical trends, total revenues and the various segments as well as the number of firms, establishments, and employment are provided in annual series from 2009 to 2019.

Firms whose primary revenue streams are derived from sales of Christmas trees, wood pellets, or maple syrup are excluded from the scope of this report. In addition, revenues of real estate investment trusts (REITs) that manage timberland are not in scope.

More information about the report is available here.