In an industry that is well known for family ties, it should come as no surprise Will Lampe is the fourth-generation president and CEO of Lampe and Malphrus Lumber Co. Lampe’s great-grandfather started the company in his 20s when he married into the family. He tried different things, and while they started as a door and window operation, sawmilling stuck. Lampe’s grandfather, the company’s next leader, then brought in James Malphrus, who’s been with the sawmill for 50 years, before Lampe bought him out in 2021.
Lampe, who looks forward to celebrating the Smithfield, North Carolina-based sawmill’s 100th anniversary this year, is a current SFPA board member and served as board chair from 2022-23.
It sounds like young leadership has been good to Lampe and Malphrus through the years, so congratulations on your anniversary milestone. Why do you like Southern Pine and this particular species (besides that it’s your business)? What do you want people to know about Southern Pine?
There are several reasons. We’re a grade mill, so we buy nice grade logs and make mostly decking. As it grows, the limbs will fall off naturally, so Southern Pine naturally delimbs itself and you get beautiful clear fiber and it’s very affordable. Southern Pine grows quickly, it’s a natural product of the U.S. South, and there’s a lot of it, so for the quality you’re getting at the price you’re getting it, it’s just hard to beat.
There’s also the environmental aspect, which is just so important right now in lumber in general.
You just mentioned sustainability, which we love to talk about at SFPA. What are you seeing and hearing when it comes to sustainability and Southern Pine?
We’ve been doing this for a long time and people plant back trees. In the majority of cases, it’s an economic decision. But especially where we are and the tracks of timber we buy, it’s a lot of smaller tracts that are in families. It may be part of a family farmland, and they want to plant it back because they want to care for the land; they enjoy it. It’s something they can show their kids and talk about from when they were young.
It’s sustainable because people are taking care of their land. They want to conserve it and carry it on to the next generation.
I love that you bring that up because we always talk about sustainability from the carbon storage angle, but the other part is how important the lumber and the forest products industry is to these communities. You see this firsthand; the work you’re doing impacts how many people?
93 people directly. There are just so many facets. There are the loggers, the landowners, the vendors – it just goes on and on.
Why do you enjoy working in the forest products industry?
Well, it’s really all I’ve known, so I don’t have a whole lot to compare it to. But I’ve found it’s been exciting, challenging, and complicated in that every day is different, every season’s different and there’s never a dull moment. It’s something you think you’ve understood, and then you learn something else the next day and realize, “Oh well, that wasn’t right.” And then you go back, and you just keep adding on to your knowledge and understanding of something.
Then the technology is changing so quickly, and it seems I can go my whole career and still feel like there’s a lot to learn.
It’s amazing. You have this centuries-old industry, and you think there are only so many ways you can cut lumber, and it’s just not that simple, right?
Right, and just within the past 20 years, it’s amazing the amount of technology coming to the mills and how it’s changed things. When you look at what we were doing 100 years ago, what are we going to do 100 years from now? I don’t have a clue, but it’s going to be a lot different.
What are you hearing from customers? I’m not looking for big trade secrets or anything, but what are your customers looking for?
We produce mostly decking, and that’s going to treaters. It’s an appearance-grade product for us. We must look at the quality, and that’s what our customers are saying: quality is important. There’s a customer base that’s important enough for them to pay a little more for it.
I have heard, at least within decking, that composites are gaining more and more market share, but because of how they look and the perceived quality difference, it has made customers more aware of how Southern Pine decking looks. There are differences in maintenance, feel, and environmental friendliness, but they want something that is going to have a higher quality look, so the quality aspect for us is even more important than it used to be.
Coming back to that earlier question, and it’s kind of a two-part question, what are you looking forward to or what do you hope to see as we close out the year and turn the page to 2025?
After COVID, people are going into a more normal mode, we’re getting back into, “OK, this is reality,” and things will settle out a little bit.
Since you were talking about technology and improvements in process efficiency in the past 20 years, where do you see the industry in 10 years? What do you think that’s going to look like?
It’s so hard to tell. If you told people 20-30 years ago this is what a sawmill was going to be like, most people would have said there’s no way. Maybe there are a few people, and they’re really smart ones, but I’m not one of them. All I got is what everyone else knows: AI and more automation. I like looking at a lot of data from a business level, not necessarily a machine level, but I think at both you’re going to see more AI being used in decision-making, helping assist us with decisions, trying to piece out patterns. But what exactly does that look like?
The Southern Forest Products Association’s A Cut Above series highlights and introduces to the Southern Pine lumber community and the greater world the amazing people who are part of our community and help keep Southern Pine among the premiere wood species domestically and internationally!