SSA office bearers, from left Graham Hansel, Oscar Tait, George Johnson, Willie Stander, Niel Gouws, Frans Metz, Fritz Ernst, Jaco Oosthuizen and Sean Brown.
By Joy Crane
Roy Southey, executive director of Sawmilling South Africa (SSA), says the depressed local market made 2025/26 an extremely tough year for sawmillers, yet they have shown resilience that many rural communities appreciate.
Southey made the comment during SSA’s AGM at the Future Africa Campus of the University of Pretoria in June. The morning session of the AGM was hosted by the Embassy of Finland, during which several Finnish government and private-sector representatives informed the sawmillers of the advantages of doing business with them.
The afternoon session was dedicated to SA sawmilling matters. Presenting the executive director’s report at the SSA AGM, Southey said that sawmills currently employ over 35,000 people, which in turn supports an estimated 300,000 family members and dependents.
“There are about 250 sawmills in SA, including large corporate mills, owner-run formal mills, and small mills that may not yet have boilers and kilns. Many of these are SMMEs (informal mills). However, we still struggle to recruit the majority of SMME mills because they prefer to operate ‘under the radar’, so to speak,” Southey said.
Illegal sawmills
“Added to this is the recent proliferation of ‘roadside sawmills’”, Southey continued. These are mills that do not register with any local authority, do not contribute to workers’ compensation, do not pay tax, and sell ungraded, inferior products chiefly to vulnerable consumers.
“While some of the roadside mills operating illegally could be classed as potential SMMEs with a bona fide desire to be incorporated into the formal sawmilling sector, many of them are nothing short of opportunists who take advantage of the availability of stolen or illegal logs”, Southey said.
“This is a worrying development and one that SSA is attempting to bring to the notice of the relevant authorities, while addressing those mill owners who would like to and have the potential to become registered informal sawmillers”.
Read the full story here – https://www.woodbizafrica.co.za/june-2026-issue-60/#june-2026-issue-60/38/