Wood Exports Hit Record Highs
Prince George, B.C.- Global trade of both logs and softwood lumber was higher in 2013 than it was in 2012 with both products reaching their highest levels traded since before the global financial crises in 2008, says the Wood Resource Quarterly . The WRQ says the total value that was traded in 2013 "was estimated to be over 50 billion dollars (based on data for the period January-October), with almost two-thirds of the value being that of softwood products."
According to the WRQ, the largest overseas trade flows were between Canada and Asia, followed by shipments from Sweden to the United Kingdom and Northern Africa .
B.C. Premier Christy Clark concurs with that assessment, as she advised the Truck Loggers Association last week, that B.C.'s lumber exports to China lin 2013, hit a new high, with $1.27 billion dollars worth of exports, a 13% increase over 2012.
The Wood resource Quarterly indicates that although shipments of logs have increased faster than shipments of lumber the past five years," the total value of traded lumber is still more than double that of logs".
Canada continues to be the primary source for imported doftwood lumber for the United States, the WRQ says Canada is "currently supplying almost 96% of all imports to the country".
The WRQ is also predicting that a strengthening lumber market in the US will see some western sawmills redirect some of their Asian shipments to the U.S.
Comments
One Mill hourly and staff 300, one large logging contractor hourly 22, trucking 12 and staff 8.Log Export is happening all over this province not just the Island. Wood lots, private sales, small scale licences, offer for sale to Mills at price China market paying no takers off it goes to the Port of Vancouver or Prince Rupert
Thank you Pat, for opening the doors.
How about, putting a squeeze on the production a bit, bring up the price we sell it for. We are selling our lumber for the same price we sold it 25 years ago.
I think the thought process needs to be reversed, stop trying to produce more lumber when its high, set it up so we control production, and than we sell the lumber at a price which reflects a good return on our resources….. No different than the egg board.
Won’t work, He spoke.
We have ‘global competitors’.
As soon as we raise the price here, the buyer goes elsewhere.
To make it work all the producing countries would have to sell their lumber like the OPEC countries sell their oil. (And even that, in a larger sense, is self defeating.)
Only there’s a mighty big difference between the two commodities. And in the situations of the major producing countries.
The whole structure of the oil industry was very early organised as a closely controlled oligopoly, one which has recently resumed openly a trend toward monopoly of even further concentration with mergers and combinations long prohibited.
All through the long history of the lumber industry in Canada and the USA there were repeated attempts to try to get a better price by restricting production. All of them ultimately failed. Some quite rapidly, others lingered longer.
In BC, Seaboard Lumber Sales probably came the closest to success in maintaining an orderly export market where each of its member mills were apportioned a quota of the business available, and an effort was made to match production with sales.
That collapsed when the larger member mills needed the additional volume of sales they could easily fill themselves in an effort to keep their ‘unit costs’ down and still remain profitable enough to attract needed capital.
The answer, if there is one, won’t be found in any of the methods we’ve tried before, and continually found wanting. It will be found in a close examination of how our ‘money system’ actually works, and why there is a perceived necessity to do many of the things we currently do in regards to our trading arrangements with other countries in our efforts to create more employment here. Some of the ‘sacred cows’ long held as absolute truths about ‘money’ need to be sacrificed. Before we, and what’s left of our resources, are.
Let’s get right at it to change the money systems.
I think bitcoins are starting to take off.
;-)
Bitcoins won’t quite cut it, gus. The accounting used is still only two dimensional, whereas the reality it’s trying to represent is three.
All logs plus 3 or 4 2X4’s?
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