Lumber Company Expanding in Southwest Virginia
Musser’s parent company, Musser Lumber Company is set to expand in Southwest Virginia. This expansion will cost $ 7.5 million but it will bring new, high-paying jobs to the area and more than doubling its production of dried hardwood chips and sawdust.
According to The Center Square, the county and commonwealth will also provide additional funding to the expansion through a grant program called the Governor’s Agriculture and Forestry Industries Development Fund, a program established in 2012 as a means of supporting agriculture and forestry “value-added or processing projects.”
The county bases its contribution on what the expansion’s local return on investment will be – the taxes that will be collected and the number of jobs that will be created – and then, through AFID, Virginia matches that contribution.
In Musser’s case, the county and state each supply $75,000 for a total grant of $150,000.
Musser is now a two-time AFID award recipient. The first time it received an AFID grant was in 2020. That funding went toward the purchase of a state-of-the-art, high-efficiency wood residual drying system, which processes thousands of tons of wood fiber annually, “all while using 30% less energy and producing less dust and volatile organic compound pollution,” according to the release.
