Our Town Edgewood: Kendrick builds family of businesses

EDGEWOOD, Iowa (KCRG) - Our Town Edgewood is home to Kendrick Forest Products, the largest sawmill operation of its kind in Iowa. Its products not only ship all over the world but are also sold here at home.

The Kendrick Family is always thinking about what’s next for the company, but the foundation hasn’t changed. Inside its main facility, machines and employees take logs and make them into a product shipped across the U.S. and to more than 20 countries.

Machinery has improved throughout the years at Kendrick, making the process more efficient and with little waste. Once the boards make it through inspection, they need time to dry before they’re shipped out, or sent to a new home in Edgewood.

“Some of our wood will go as local as the local high school shop class, east coast, west coast, or overseas into Asia and Europe and so forth,” says Kirby Kendrick, who’s in charge of international sales.

Some of it also travels just blocks away to this facility, where Kendrick turns lumber into a finished product.

”We have cabinet customers and we have lumber coming in for them, and then we also manufacture wood signs for customers throughout the entire United States,” says Sales and Production Manager, Kerra Boriskey.

Boriskey says they make from 40,000 wood signs to order with custom designs. Some of them are sold at the neighboring retail store, the Markket, a two-story shopping experience that draws in visitors to Edgewood. You’ll find everything from furniture and home decor, to boutique-style clothing and solid wood products made within the same building.

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