It’s interesting to learn of B.C. government initiatives to further boost lumber trade to China. The rationale for increasing offshore shipments – in the face of beetle-kill salvage logging in BC coupled with a fibre deficit in China – has been characterized in the past as helping support lumber prices here in North America. Random Lengths has acknowledged that North American suppliers gain price leverage in offshore markets.

According to today’s Vancouver Sun, Forests Minister Steve Thomson has confirmed the value of wood exports to China this year is up 6.6 percent. As more timber supply areas in this province approach the end of beetlemania, some might be asking how we reconcile a memorandum of understanding aimed at growing offshore shipments year after year.

“The industry is smaller today and it’s going to be smaller tomorrow in British Columbia.”
West Fraser CEO Ted Seraphim, BNN interview  24 Dec. 2013

“What people seem to forget – and I don’t really understand this – is that there was extra capacity created to process this lumber when the beetle reached its peak. Surely people then realized that this was a temporary thing; that it wasn’t going to last.”
– Dean of the Faculty of Forestry at UBC, John Inness, Vancouver Sun  26 June 2012