Dive summary:

• Plywood manufacturers backed off – way off – when the recession knocked the wind out of U.S. construction, especially home-building, but now they are the ones trying to catch their wind as they race to catch up with renewed demand.
• Mark Luetters, executive vice president of Georgia-Pacific's building products division, says the company has done what it can to add workers and tweak production at its existing facilities and will now need to put $400 million into creating more capacity.
• Boise Cascade, No. 2 in the U.S. plywood market, is not planning more physical capacity now, but the company is adding shifts at its plants and workers to staff them.

From the article:

U.S. softwood plywood consumption was cut almost in half during the recession, falling from 16.3 billion square feet in 2005 to 8.7 billion in 2009 [and it] hit a low of 8.6 billion in 2011. ...