Proposal backed
for wood products
venture on Big Island

By Rod Thompson
Big Island correspondent

HILO -- The state has accepted a proposal from a West Coast joint venture to set up a wood products industry in east Hawaii, which could invest $25 million and create up to 575 jobs, the Department of Land Natural Resources has announced.

The viability of the project depends on the venture's ability to buy timber from 12,000 acres of private land, said Michael Buck of the Division of Forest and Wildlife.

That would be combined with 8,000 acres to be leased from the state in the Waiakea Timber Management Area about five miles southwest of Hilo, Buck said.

Don Bryan, an official of the joint venture called Tradewinds Forest Products, said the company has been in discussion with three large private landowners for a year.

"We're significantly into negotiation and have reached a state where we have reason to think we will agree," he said.

He declined to name the three but said his company also eventually hopes to buy timber from numerous small landowners

A lease for the state land has not been signed, but Bryan has been in Hawaii for three years making preparations, Buck said.

Bryan is president of the Timber Exchange of Portland, Ore., a forestry investment brokerage, which is one of two entities in the joint venture.

The other is Quality Veneer & Lumber of Seattle, which operates four wood products mills in Oregon and Washington, making items for use in engineered wood products, the state announcement said. The company employs about 600 people.

The Tradewinds proposal would use non-native hardwoods planted on 8,000 acres of a 12,000-acre tract called the Waiakea Timber Management Area. The state has planted nonnative trees there since 1959.

Bryan said the goal is a mill that operates in three shifts, around the clock, 120 hours per week.

The factor which will make the operation possible is growth rates for trees in Hawaii, seven times faster than in Oregon, Bryan said.

"It grows like a screaming banshee," he said.

The immediate goal would be to build a small sawmill, which can cut toon and Queensland maple into lumber for cabinetry and other specialty uses, Bryan said.