If you’ve been looking out your window for the past month, you’ll have witnessed the splendor of one of our state’s greatest treasures – our trees. Every fall we’re invited to experience Michigan by traveling up north or taking a drive into the country to visit an apple orchard, but we rarely consider other valuable aspects of trees besides their beauty: trees create both products and jobs for Michigan and its residents.
Kamps Pallets depends on the logging industry to provide the hardwood we make our pallets from. The pallet industry is not the only one that directly benefits from logging in Michigan, however. Did you know that, either directly or indirectly, forest products manufacturing is a $51 billion dollar industry in this state and accounts for approximately 10 percent of its manufacturing?
Michigan’s temperate climate and regular rainfall have blessed us with the beauty of millions of trees. Logging those trees sustainably gives us flooring, housing and other construction, the furniture that Grand Rapids has always been famous for, and, of course, pallets.
You may not know this, but Michigan is also known for its logistics industry. It has the busiest border crossing in North America, is a center link of the NAFTA corridor, and is an important shipping hub to Asia. Do you know what facilitates all of that shipping? That’s right – pallets! Without trees we couldn’t have pallets and without pallets shipping wouldn’t be the billion dollar industry that it is. Almost every item that you buy that is stamped with “Made in China” on its back came here on a pallet, and the goods that ship to Asia and elsewhere in trade also travel on pallets. It’s all interconnected: Michigan lumber, pallets, and the global economy.
You may not appreciate trees when you’re out in your backyard raking leaves this weekend, but they are vital on the personal, local, state, and international level for many of the comforts we take for granted. Be thankful for them. We at Kamps most certainly are.
