Analyzing Forest Products Markets and Forecasting Log Prices in the PNW

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Agenda
Start Date: March 25, 2015
Location: The workshop will be held at the DoubleTree Hotel Lloyd Center at 1000 NE Multnomah St. in Portland, OR. The hotel can be reached at: 503-281-6111. The DoubleTree is at the Lloyd Center/NE 11th Avenue stop on the Portland light rail MAX system.

Agenda

8:00     Instructor introduction and course overview

8:15     Timber Market Frameworks: What are We Trying to Answer? What are the Tools of the Trade?

8:45     Defining “Operable” and Analyzable” Markets: Group exercise on drafting geographic wood and timber markets. How do we account for size, location, operations, and data collection?

9:30    Break

9:45     Detailing Wood Demand and Competition: Assessing the location, size, type, status, and risk of existing wood-using facilities.

10:45     Screening Wood Bioenergy Projects: How do we screen bioenergy projects for analysis of local wood markets?

11:30     Lunch

12:15     Analyzing and Forecasting Stumpage and Delivered Prices: Identifying, organizing, and analyzing basin-specific stumpage and delivered prices. Group exercise on estimating future prices.

2:15     Break

2:30     Estimating Supply Chain Issues: Evaluation logging capacity, transportation and rail lines, and port access.

3:30     Compiling and Communicating Final Results: Confirming final results and recommendations, producing final deliverables, and communication technical information and results.

4:00     Session adjourns

The course includes two 15-minute breaks, lunch, hard copies of all course materials, and electronic copies of supplementary reference materials and copies of the book “Wood for Bioenergy” (Forest History Society).

 

About the Conference
What is the Course About? This course reviews a process of systematically evaluating and tracking local wood raw material markets and regional forest product markets for investing in and managing timberlands and wood-using facilities. It provides a process for prioritizing questions, aggregating data, conducting analysis and communicating results and recommendations. The process has evolved through hundreds of FORISK engagements and dozens of research studies focused on breaking down local wood baskets and timber markets for a range of questions and clients. These skills help mitigate risk and increase the opportunities for returns through reducing errors, prioritizing resource allocation and highlighting unanswered questions. In addition, they lower costs through enabling firms to save time and conduct internally the analyses required for timber and wood-related capital allocation decisions. Who Should Attend? Anyone who wants a detailed process to understand, track, and analyze the dynamics of local wood baskets and regional forest product markets. Previous participants include forestry consultants and analysts, timberland owners and investors, wood procurement professionals, bioenergy managers, finance and accounting professionals and attorneys.

About the instructor:

Dr. Brooks Mendell is President at FORISK, where he leads the firm’s research program. He has over twenty years of operating, research, and consulting experience in forest business, bioenergy and finance. His experience includes roles in harvest operations and wood procurement with Weyerhaeuser, in management consulting with Accenture and in academia at the University of Georgia. A Fulbright Scholar, Dr. Mendell publishes analysis of timber markets, forest business and operations, and wood bioenergy. His forestry-related books include “Loving Trees is Not Enough”, “Forest Finance Simplified”, and “Wood for Bioenergy” (co-authored with Amanda Lang). Dr. Mendell earned BS and MS degrees at M.I.T., an MBA at the University of California at Berkeley, and a PhD in Forest Finance at UGA.