MONTREAL – There’s no sign that China’s appetite for lumber is waning despite its somewhat slower economic growth, according a top executive of West Fraser Timber who sees demand remaining strong not only for his company but for other producers as well.
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The Plum Creek Timber mill in Evergreen, Mont., is far removed from the housing recovery making headlines nationwide — but its fortunes are not.
After a four-year shutdown, the mill reopened in March thanks to rising lumber prices and a resurgence in home building.
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EDMONTON – Gaining access to China’s fast-growing market remains little more than a pipe dream (pun intended) for Alberta’s oil industry.
Although the lack of access is costing oil producers and taxpayers billions of dollars a year in lost revenues, it’s not likely to be resolved any time soon.
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EDMONTON – Demand and prices may be booming, but a projected labour crunch is forcing Canada’s forestry industry to ramp up its recruiting game.
The Forest Products Association of Canada (FPAC) predicts that it will need to hire at least 60,000 workers by 2020 to replace 40,000 lost to retirement and another 20,000 needed to grow the industry. And the Conference Board of Canada says the 160,000-strong forestry workforce is older than average, because of downsizing in the last decade.
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Chris McIver no longer winces when he looks at a map of his company’s sawmills in British Columbia, Alberta and the U.S. Southeast.
With the pain dissipating from an era of low lumber prices, he has turned optimistic and is pleased to see West Fraser Timber Co. Ltd.’s sawmills receiving a stream of orders from wholesalers and distributors.
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Lumber prices are expected to soar next year before hitting all-time highs in 2014, bringing a flood of cash to B.C. sawmills and restoring health to provincial resource revenues, according to a report by the Vancouver consulting group International Wood Markets.
Wood Markets president Russ Fraser said the dynamics have been in place since 2008 for a so-called “supercycle” that will push lumber prices into the stratosphere. The only missing element, he said Tuesday, has been a recovery in U.S. housing starts. Barring a broader economic calamity, such as failure to resolve the fiscal cliff, the U.S. housing sector has begun that long-awaited recovery, he said.
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CALGARY, AB, Oct. 30,2012/ Troy Media/ – Prices for lumber are currently some of the strongest the industry has enjoyed in almost three years. You have to go all the way back to the pre-recession years of 2004 and 2005 to find lumber prices consistently this solid.
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