Arkadelphia sawmill shuts down, citing economic hardships

By JOEL PHELPS | arkadelphian.com

ARKADELPHIA, Arkansas — Shields Wood Products, a longtime Arkadelphia sawmill operation, has halted operations, owner Ritchie Shields confirmed.

“We closed due to economic conditions and are working on new means of getting the mill back in operation or possibly selling,” Shields told The Arkadelphian on Thursday, July 24, 2025.

Shields Wood Products manufactured pallet lumber and industrial shipping products and had been in operation for 25 years. It employed 40 people at the time production came to a halt on July 11, and produced an average of about 10 million board feet per year.

Shields said the decision to close was due mainly because of the falling price of lumber and the cost to manufacture the product. Production costs — particularly labor, power and parts — have increased, while lumber prices have fallen, he said.

“Pallets are just not selling,” Shields said. “Volume has gone from a level we could sustain to not enough orders, and the orders we had were below cost.”

Shields’s closure comes on the heels of recent news that Brazeale Lumber Company halted its operation in Sparkman, where for 70 years the mill produced rough green lumber, cross ties and specialty timber.

Smaller operations that manufacture wood products are feeling the economic pinch amid uncertainties and a flailing lumber market as in recent days prices for Southern Yellow Pine products have dipped below pre-Covid times.

In the first quarter of 2025, statewide average stumpage prices for pine saw timber increased by 10% from the previous quarter in 2024, according to data provided by Timber Mart-South and published by the University of Arkansas System Division of Agriculture. For the same period in 2020, stumpage prices began to show the pandemic’s impacts on timber markets, resulting in mill closures and many locations having full wood yards and low quotas.