Petersburg’s Alaska Timber and Truss is expanding its operation at Falls Creek with a 71-acre purchase from the Alaska Mental Health Land Trust.

Brett Martin, who owns the mill with partner Mike Duman, said the acquisition will provide crucial space for sorting logs and expanding milling operations as demand increases for locally sourced lumber across the state.

“We really needed somehow to be able to expand our mill operation,” Martin said last month. “When we purchased the mill, the sort yard didn’t come with it, but it had been used for quite some time to deck logs for the mill itself.”

The purchase includes land on both sides of the road approaching the mill. The area on the left side, currently overgrown with alder, was historically used as a sort yard and will be reopened for that purpose. Martin said efficient sorting by diameter and length is essential as the mill scales up production.

In the near term, the business plans to expand the mill site to the west and establish the sort yard to the south and west of the main operation. Within the next year or two, the company will need to construct warehouses to store wood products under cover and build additional structures to house new mill equipment.

“As the demand for product increases, our own internal demand for building space and newer mill equipment is coming fast and furious,” Martin said.

Equipment additions include another carriage mill currently being transported from Washington state, which the company expects to have operational by the end of February. The company is also considering purchasing another Hurdle mill that could be set up at its Thomas Bay timber sale site to mill cants before shipping them back to Petersburg.

The land purchase comes as Alaska Timber and Truss gains recognition for its potential to help address housing needs across Alaska. Martin recently hosted a two-day tour for representatives from multiple state and federal agencies interested in sourcing lumber from Southeast Alaska for rural housing projects.

The tour focused on exploring ways to transport lumber from Southeast Alaska to Southcentral and Western Alaska.

The immediate result of those discussions is a pilot project to supply components for four house kits to Western Alaska villages, with the potential to expand to 20 houses next year. The communities receiving the housing components include some of the same villages hit by Typhoon Merbok.

Alaska Timber and Truss will provide rafters, ridge beams, floor joists, flooring, interior paneling, exterior siding, trim, porch stringers and stair treads. Alaska Insulated Panels, of Palmer, will produce the walls, floors and potentially ceilings. Timberline Homes, also based in Palmer, is providing four truss packages using lumber from the Petersburg mill.

All materials are expected to ship in April, with plans to route them either through Alaska Marine Lines to Tacoma and then out to Western Alaska, or by ferry to Haines and then via the road system to Southcentral.

The business model at Alaska Timber and Truss focuses on domestic milling and keeping products within Alaska, in contrast to larger operations that primarily export logs and cants.

“Retaining everything within the state of Alaska is really what our business model is,” Martin said.

Alaska Timber and Truss also recently secured the Thomas Bay timber sale from the U.S. Forest Service. “We’ve been trying to really build our timber base where we could actually buy enough product that we could sell,” Martin said. “I think now we have the capacity to do that.”