Fueled by $750,000 of Headwaters Fund money, the county’s Economic Development Division will launch a marketing campaign touting the county’s most well-known resource product — redwood lumber.
At its April 24 meeting, the county’s Board of Supervisors approved the hefty Headwaters grant after being told that wood-plastic composite is successfully competing against redwood for decking, one of the most common uses of lumber products.
Headwaters Fund Coordinator Dawn Elsbree said an advertising and marketing effort to “rebrand redwood in California” will aim to increase demand and production by 40 percent over 10 years, with the retention of over 800 jobs a minimum goal.
The grant pays for the first three years of the marketing drive. Two companies — the Humboldt Redwood Company and the California Redwood Company — will match the grant for a total of $1.5 million worth of redwood marketing.
Economic Development Director Jacqueline Debets said increasing the demand for redwood will spur higher prices or “at least” stabilize them, as “prices now are very low.”
She predicted a multiplier effect as more redwood is sold, with increased numbers of trucking, scaling and logging jobs. Debets said it’s a pivotal time to advance redwood in the marketplace.
“Right now we’re at an all-time low, to a great degree because of the recession,” she continued. “When we look forward, the housing market is going to recover and we want to shift consumer desire to redwood now so when they do start buying, they buy redwood.”
Redwood’s primary competitor, composite plastic, is gaining market prominence and “redwood hasn’t been saying anything in response to composite or plastic lumber’s claims — there’s been no pushback,” said Debets, adding, “The truth is really on redwood’s side.”
Supervisor Mark Lovelace questioned the grant’s outcome forecasts and said redwood products aren’t what they used to be. “If we’re going to be marketing redwood as a high quality softwood, then I need to see that this will create an incentive for the industry to make it a higher quality softwood than what it’s become,” he said.
Lovelace named longer harvesting rotations and uneven-aged harvesting as techniques that will improve quality. The controversial logging of the last few decades has had “the unfortunate impact of making (redwood) a wood that’s just not what it was,” he continued.
But Carl Schoenhofer of the California Redwood Company said redwood still beats its market competitor. “Although we’re harvesting younger-growth trees these days, redwood still wins — hands down — when it comes to beauty and aesthetics,” he told supervisors.
Answering Lovelace’s questions about how the effort will help non-industrial timberland owners, Debets said increased demand for redwood decking will benefit all redwood producers.
The two companies are committed to continuing the marketing effort for 10 years, she continued, and hitting the 40 percent market increase target will yield economic and employment expansion.
She added that the alternative is to allow composite plastic manufacturers to dominate consumer attention. “If we don’t do this, all we’re doing is giving more time to the competition because we’ll be putting less message into the marketplace,” she said.
That’s not what will happen. Supervisors unanimously approved the Headwaters grant and the first phase of the marketing campaign will begin soon.
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