James Bruggers

@jbruggers

Kentucky%27s forest and wood products industries provided more than 59%2C000 jobs last year%2C up 4.3 percent since 2011.

The industry provided %247.9 billion in direct contributions to the state%27s economy%2C up 2.9 percent from 2011.

There's fire. There's smoke.

There's the clatter of machinery, the buzzing of saws and pounding of hammers — all inside a 1920s brick and wood factory, where Brown-Forman Cooperage workers make 2,700 whiskey barrels each day from white oak.

With Brown-Forman investing $135 million to expand its Jack Daniel's Tennessee Whiskey and Woodford Reserve Kentucky Bourbon brands, the 230 production workers at the Louisville barrel-making assembly line are getting overtime, even as the company plans to open a new cooperage in Alabama this spring to keep up with demand.

"Our production is as high as it's ever been," more than 600,000 barrels a year, said Darren Whitmer, operations manager at the plant on the west side of Louisville International Airport on MacLean Avenue. "It gets tougher and tougher for us every day."

The growing popularity of bourbon and whiskey worldwide is helping to bring back Kentucky's forest and wood-products industry from the recession that caused it to tank in 2009, said Jeff Stringer, a UK forestry extension professor and co-author of Kentucky Forestry Economic Impact Report for 2013-14.

Stringer and three other UK professors — Billy Thomas, Bobby Ammerman, and Alison Davis — co-wrote the report made public Thursday.

"The most fragile part of this whole thing is logging," because the cost of fuel, tires, and equipment "put them in a squeeze," he said.

But the industry, he said, "is coming back." It is adding jobs and money to the economy after some segments of it saw production cut in half a few years ago, he said.

"Our analysis indicated it provided more than 59,000 jobs and a total economic impact of $12.8 billion in 2013," Stringer said.

Rising economic impact

The UK team found that the economic impact from the industry was up 3.3 percent since 2011. Employment within the industry also increased by more than 4 percent since 2011.

In all, the industry directly employed 27,574 last year, up 4.6 percent since 2011, according to the report. Stringer said forestry and wood products account for about 3 percent of the state's workforce.

And the industry pumped $7.9 billion into the state's economy, up 2.9 percent from 2011 — putting it on par with the with the state's tourism industry, according to Stringer.

Stringer presented the findings Thursday at the Kentucky Forest Industries Association annual meeting, held at the Brown Hotel. More than 200 people are attending the conference, said association president Henry Christ.

Nearly all segments of the industry

showed growth last year and are poised for more in 2014, Springer said. One area that's lagging is pulp and paper production, driven in part by declining demand for newsprint, he said.

Logging and milling grew the most, but commercial logging levels are still off their peak from 1999, he said. Most of the logging occurs on private land, he said.

Despite the recent logging upturn, Kentucky's forests are not being depleted as in some foreign countries, said Leah MacSwords, director of the Kentucky Division of Forestry, which tracks and regulates logging in the state.

Though the number of forested acres decreased in the 1980s, it bounced back to about 12.4 million acres by the early 2000s and "has been holding steady," with those forests growing more and bigger trees, she said.

"Kentucky currently is growing almost two times more trees than are being harvested," Stringer said.

Housing starts have rebounded since th

e recession, picking up the state's hardwood forest industries that harvest and make wood floors and cabinets, he said.

And secondary wood industries, including barrel-making, had $1.9 billion in direct revenues, also an increase, the study found.

Barrels lead the state in foreign exports, as they have for many years, he added.

The barrel business

Stringer said operations like the Brown-Forman Cooperage show how the industry boosts the economies of cities, as well as rural areas across the state.

Brown-Forman operates three sawmills in Tennessee, Ohio and Alabama, which provide about 40 percent of the white oak they need for the barrels, Whitmer said. The Louisville plant gets about a quarter of its wood from Kentucky forests, he added.

At the plant, UAW union workers assemble the 105-pound barrels by hand each day. Pieces of wood are sawed into staves (the wooden planks that make up the side of a barrel), muscled into place, wrapped in steel bands, steamed so they become water tight, and their insides are blasted with fire.

The charring provides color and taste, makin

Bourbon barrels can only be used once and eventually are sold to whiskey distillers in Scotland and Ireland, he said.g barrel production part of the recipe for bourbon or Jack Daniel's, Whitmer said.

Whitmer said he's worked at the plant for 13 years and never tires of the sights and smells.

"Every day, when I pull up, the first thing you smell is the burning white oak," he said. "You smell that sweetness in the air."

Reach reporter James Bruggers at (502) 582-4645 or on Twitter @jbruggers.

By the numbers

• Kentucky counties with commercial logging: all 120

• Forest industry facilities: 703 in 109 counties.

• Forest industry employment: about 59,000 jobs.

• State economic impact: $12.8 billion.

• Export value to Europe: $81.2 million, up 26 percent since 2012.

• U.S. rank for hardwood sawlog production: 2nd.

Source: Kentucky Forestry Economic Impact Report 2013-2014.