Southern Oregon’s mills remain essential to the region’s working economy.

Wood-product manufacturing remains one of Oregon’s most important rural industries, linking working forests, skilled manufacturing, transportation networks and markets for lumber and useful mill byproducts.

An April 2025 analysis from the Oregon Employment Department reports that wood-product manufacturing remains Oregon’s third-largest manufacturing industry. The agency projects approximately 700 additional jobs in the sector between 2023 and 2033, even as modern mills continue to gain efficiency and extract more value from each unit of timber.

Why Southern Oregon matters

Southern Oregon sits within the western Oregon manufacturing corridor where productive forests, experienced mill communities and access to Interstate 5 support a durable forest-products economy. Sawmills convert responsibly harvested logs into lumber, while residual streams such as clean sawdust, chips and bark create opportunities for additional productive uses.

Those residuals exist because lumber is being manufactured—not because trees are harvested solely to create biomass. Building dependable markets for qualified byproducts can support mill efficiency, reduce material waste and strengthen the economics of regional manufacturing.

From mill residual to qualified resource

UEG works with producers to define material origin, specifications, moisture, volume, handling and documentation before a supply program moves toward processing or export. The goal is to preserve the value of a clean manufacturing byproduct while giving customers reliable information about what the material is and where it came from.