Rock Wood Products of Dillwyn Inc. will invest $8.75 million to expand its sawmill operation in Buckingham County, bringing 12 new jobs to the county and doubling the mill’s production capacity.

The announcement came Thursday afternoon during a press conference featuring Gov. Terry McAuliffe; Secretary of Agriculture and Forestry Dr. Basil Gooden, a Buckingham native; District Six Supervisor and Board of Supervisors Chairman Joe N. Chambers Jr.; and other county supervisors and state legislators.

Rock Wood currently employs nearly 30 full-time and part-time employees, according to mill Manager Tim Pierce, whose father was one of the original mill’s founders.

“We’re going to double what we’re doing now as far as production. He’s got big plans,” Pierce said of Bill MacCauley, president of John Rock Inc., the parent company of Rock Wood Products. “It’ll probably be some more stuff coming down the line. He doesn’t sit still.”

The company, which purchased the former Pierce-Johnson Lumber Co. in 2014, will source 100 percent of its timber needs from Virginia landowners for the expansion project.

According to McAuliffe, the expansion will net production of pallets, flooring and railroad ties.

“Over the course of the next three years, they will purchase $3.6 million of our forest products, all of it from Virginia products, which is great … Add that $3.6 million on top of the investment we’re making here today,” McAuliffe said.

Gooden called the expansion announcement a “tremendous economic event … for Buckingham County.”

The expansion is the first economic development project in Buckingham County to receive state discretionary incentives on record in the form of a $150,000 Governor’s Agriculture and Forestry Industries Development (AFID) grant, according to a release from the governor’s office. McAuliffe presented the check to the county.

“We are very excited that Rock Wood Products has chosen to continue operating in our county, to expand the business, and to increase the number of employees,” Buckingham County Administrator Rebecca Carter said.

Carter said the grant from the AFID fund “has resulted in a successful partnership that will not only benefit Buckingham County but also the Commonwealth of Virginia for years to come.”

“This is important,” McAuliffe said. “We’re talking about timber. We’re talking about pallets. Now is a perfect time for us to be selling our products around the globe.”

The governor said the timber industry is a $17 billion business, with more than 100,000 people in the state working in the forestry business.

“This is the first time I’ve had the governor of one of the states come and visit us,” said MacCauley, who also said John Rock Inc. has facilities in five states.

“I’ll beat that. I have a pretty good record,” he said of the potential for greater expansion at the Buckingham facility in the future. “Hopefully, if these guys do their jobs, in about 5-6 months, where we’re standing, there’ll be lumber coming out.”

Carter said the expansion is estimated to bring in an additional $136,000 in new tax revenue annually, including $116,000 in machinery tools and about $20,000 in real estate.

“This is all in addition to what they already pay,” she said.

Carter said the county is matching the $150,000 AFID fund grant for Rock Wood through the abatement of taxes paid by the firm.