The opening session of the second day of the Council of Forest Industries (COFI) convention focused on wood fibre supply and constraints.  Murray Hall, a consultant for BC Fibre Supply, began by reminding the audience about the magnitude of the pine beetle infestation – unprecedented in North America – and its implications for all parts of the forest industry.  He pointed out that the saw logs available for harvest each year in the province will dip from around 40 million down to 30 million cubic metres or so in the years to come.

This, of course, has implications for the solid wood industry.  But it has special concern for the residual wood industry which is based on utilization of sawdust, chips, and wood waste for wood pellets, power generation, Medium Density Fibreboard, biofuels, biochemicals, and a diversity of other products.

According to Hall, the bio-economy, especially wood pellet plant capacity, has been growing in leaps and bounds.  But with forestry operations running at the current rate, wood supply in various parts of the Interior will “go negative by 2023-25.” The impact is expected to be hard in the Prince George and Cariboo regions where, in his opinion, there needs to be “rationalization” in the residual wood industry, which could include reducing operating rates and closing some facilities.  Something needs to change, he says.

Mark Feldinger, Senior VP at Canfor, also believes that there is no question that a fibre supply challenge exists.  Although the company’s current saw log / peeler log operations are economically healthy, he sees the need for forest companies to make the transition from being saw log centres to “a full fibre model.”  His recommendations for increasing supply for residual operations include keeping existing residual and waste benchmarks, reducing what he terms “administrative processes”, and increasing access to marginal stands of forest.

In his remarks, Dave Peterson, Chief Forester of the Province of BC, remained upbeat that the timber supply would eventually stabilize, and, down the road, the Allowable Annual Cut could even get back to pre-Mountain Pine Beetle levels.  In regards to residual wood, he pointed out that there are three primary sources: sawmills, harvesting, and non-saw logs.  Like Feldinger, he believes that non-saw logs present a huge opportunity, although he did not elaborate as to whether these would come from productive or marginal stands.

What became obvious in the course of discussion and the question and answer period is that the wood supply problem has the potential for aggravating competitive pressures between forest companies, as well as between the primary industry sector and the residual and secondary wood sectors.

However, Chief Forester Peterson did not appear to see much of a role in government getting involved in what he termed “business to business” relations.   In his opinion, there is no magic bullet.  Instead, companies need to adopt an “integrated harvest regime” and involve multiple partners.  Success will depend on addressing the needs and rights of all concerned.