Lets hope they have a plan which will produce results. These talks about value added jobs have been around for the last 15 years.

I found that this post said nothing at all. Guess we will have to wait for the document which will explain what "we want to ratchet up our business end into much higher value products.” means. Right now I can not for the life of me figure out what product is going to be better than the lumber itself. *confused look

Smoke and Mirrors Shellshadow. Nothing new in the NEW PLAN. But it makes it look like there is something being done.

Wow, I'll vote for you Pattie.

We're going to build wooden wagon wheels for the days when we return to the horse and buggy because we don't have any money and gas is too expensive anyway.

Like the advertising on TV where wooden wheels are used.

quit shipping raw logs u twit.

It says:"the document will speak to HOW WE CAN CREATE an industry where there is more employment .......... "

There has been a lot of talk by a lot of people people on all sides of the government and in other so called marketing organizations as well as the general public that we need to provide value added products in forstry beyond lumber, panels, pulp and pellets.

This report is supposed to address how we CAN do that.

I will wait till I read it to comment. I have not read anything from government how we CAN.

Of course, that is also all good and well. CAN is still not there. What we really need to know is how we WILL do that. What are the IMPLEMENTATION strategies?

There are countries that have beaten us at this for some time. They make furniture, they make specialty paper products we do not touch, they make building products such as windows, doors, trim, etc. etc.

We have not been competing very well in these markets.

So, how will we compete? We cannot sell anything until we make it. Who will make it. What will government do to encourage manufacturers to compete? What will govenment do to research brand new products and brand new markets?

If nothing, then shut up and tell us it is the work of private industry. If it is, then we are doomed since we are looking at what private industry can do right now. They make the same stuff over and over again. If there is no market, they lay off people, close plants, buy up companies in trouble, and wait till the market picks up. One of these days it won't. These might be those days.

Smarter countries are helping their industries in such times to diversify. Let's see if this province and this government and this minister will be join the tactics of those smarter countries.

BC needs to learn from the auto industry and realize that powerful unions are great until they make the industry uncompetitive and completely destroy it. Until then we are witnessing a dying industry. No one is going to make furniture or any other value added wood product here until the threat of union labor monopolies is eliminated or at least reduced to a viable level.

The only way to generate more value from BC forests is to (1) Find a way to kill the pine beetle (2) Grow more trees, fast; and (3) solve the US economic crisis.

In other words, there isn't a way.

Always those talking about 'value-added' see the whole thing in terms of how many 'jobs' it will create. While those doing 'value-added' look at it in terms of how many 'jobs' they can eliminate. Value added, to them, is any further process beyond any product's initial stages pf manufacture that can return its costs plus an additional profit. If it can't return its costs and generate an additional profit, there is no value added. Period. If any politician thinks the whole exercise is necessary just to give someone a 'job', exactly the same thing could be done by digging holes and filling them in again.

Born in BC yea right, where do you think your quality of life came from. Time to educate yourself. I suppose you think its alright for CEO's to collect their millions. Do you have it all wrong or what.

Do not confuse value added with increased productivity.

Value added is a term which refers to the additional value of a commodity over the cost of commodities used to produce it from the previous stage of production.

Thus, if I buy 20 board feet of lumber for a total cost of say $100 and create a handcrafted coffee table out of that and can sell it to a specialty furniture store for $500, then I have increased the value of that product 5 fold.

If I create an artistic, unique coffee table, I might be lucky and sell it for $5,000 as a functional work of art.

"In other words, there isn't a way."

There is if one takes growth in numbers out of the equation and puts in growth in quality. One of these day one will no longer be able to rely on growth in numbers. Some countries have started to understand that a few decades ago. North America has not yet understood that.

The key to what you are saying, Gus, is in the words, "...and can sell it". If you CAN'T sell it, all you have added is "cost".

To the politician the added value is entirely in the 'job' the process creates. He's not looking at whether there's any 'real' customer demand for the final product. And certainly not whether that 'real' demand, if there is any, can be made 'effective demand'. (By those who want it having sufficient purchasing power to meet a price that fully covers the costs of its making, plus enough of an inducement in profit for the the value-added manufacturer to continue production.)

Things that CAN be done in the field of 'value-adding' are already being done. British Columbians are enterprising people, and where there is opportunity "...to recover costs, plus an additional profit" from value-adding, chances are someone is already doing that. Many 'value-added' operations are craftsman type businesses, often not amenable to being larger than what can be handled by an owner-operator. Many of them have a specialty that they don't broadly advertise. For if everyone got into the act, their specialty would quickly become commoditized, and nobody would make anything from doing it.

Others, where there are employees working in a production line type set-up, are businesses which upgrade raw material that has little or no value to start with. Making finger-jointed lumber out of low grade lodgepole shorts is a prime example. It is extremely difficult in such businesses to value-add anything which is already valuable. And this is the fact that is most often lost on the politicos in their never ending quest to claim credit for creating 'jobs'.

If you took a large raw gemstone, something akin to the size of the Hope diamond, for instance, and cut and faceted and finished it as four smaller diamonds rather than the one big one, the work and wages of the diamond cutters have probably multiplied four times.

But does the 'value' of the four finished smaller stones even add up to the 'value' of the one big one? True enough, the four smaller rocks might be more saleable to more people than the one big one would be, but that make them more valuable? And it isn't so different in lumber. A large long timber, which takes a minimum of time and effort to produce, invariably sells for far more and a better overall return than reducing the same log to a multitude of smaller pieces of flooring or fancy panelling.

"The key to what you are saying, Gus, is in the words, "...and can sell it". If you CAN'T sell it, all you have added is "cost". "

Of course. Why even make such a obvious statement? A waste of excited electrons on my monitor. :-)

That's why we are in the pickle we are in today. We have more than normal capacity to create product for market. The problem is we cannot sell that product to the customers we had.

So, sit there and die, or get off your butts and do something productive. There is no better time to do that than when customers have stood producers up and when producers are idle. Time to retool, find new customers, and promote the your business like you have never done in your life. It's a new ball game for many.

"Things that CAN be done in the field of 'value-adding' are already being done."

No they have not by a long stretch. I do not know how often one has to say that Canada is a newbie in a country competing on the global market. Comparatively speaking, this country and especially this province, does squat when it comes to global competition. Just look at that report and look at how little Canada and BC gets from its forests as far as revenue goes when compared to other countries. It has a way to got to even catch up to the USA. It needs to improve 5 fold in order to catch up with Japan and Germany. Look at some of the forest products that Finland, Sweden, Norway, Germany are producing. Look at all the specialty paper products that Japan is producing. We're probably shipping pulp to them to produce them. Talk about shipping raw logs. never hear anyone talk about shipping pulp. Virtually the same difference.

We have not been very smart. We have been taking the easy money and letting others benefit from the low cost of our products. Time to realize that and be more effective in the world of business.

Government has to be part of that. Otherwise we will continue to send our best people and best ideas to other countries where those countires see the opportunities and invest in creating jobs in those countries. The solar cell production in Germany by a Canadian entrepreneur is the latest example of that.

"But does the 'value' of the four finished smaller stones even add up to the 'value' of the one big one? True enough, the four smaller rocks might be more saleable to more people than the one big one would be, but that make them more valuable?"

The end use is what creates value.

With respect to the diamond, it has a value as a big rock to those who collect big rocks because it is a rare rock. The size it wass found in makes it even rarer. It has no other value than that in its raw state.

It also has an industrial value - the industry of jewelry as well as the industry of manufacturing. Since we can make artifical diamonds, the value in the latter world has dropped. With respect to jewelry, the value is artificially controlled and has stayed high. The maximum value based on that varies with the times. When people have lots of money to burn, as in the new rich primarily, the more relatively large pieces (5 carrats??) one can get out of them, the better it will be. I am not a diamond merchant, so really do not know where the peak combination of number and size is when related to production, marketing and distribution costs.

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"It is extremely difficult in such businesses to value-add anything which is already valuable"

If you have a hundred hectare woodlot and can harvest 1.5 hectares per year form that lot to sell to a mill for sawn lumbewr production and get X dollars for that, would you consider selling 0.5 heactares of that harvest to someone who makes wood furniture for the same X dollars and save yourself the cost of not harvesting and replanting the remaining one hectare? Would you go after more of those kind of markets and keep the one hetare "in the bank" while you go after more of those kind of markets? Would you start adding value to your standing fibre by tending the stand so that there are fewer knots in the wood and that select trees grow faster and straighter?

Or would you tend the trees so that they produce more burls for artistic use of your tree farm?

Or would you do all of the above and then some so that you are growing a diversified raw materail for a diversified market in case parts of the market take a nose dive?

Is that a true business person that would do that rather than an opportunist?

We have billions of metres of standing dead timber that can be used to produce heat or energy.

Energy produced can be transformed into other forms of energy.

This is a clean technology and considered carbon-neutral.

We have all this dead timber that we should be looking at trying to recover some value for in the very right now future, while we are still able to.

It can be chipped and stored, used for alcohol production, burned for heat, burned to produce steam-powered electricity, etc.

We should be doing something right now, and no time like the present economic situation to be selling a commodity that never goes out of style.

To add to the post made by "reasonableman"

I think the reason which we have waited and continue to wait for the green energy movement to build to a large enough capacity to use the vast dead forests which we have are because we are waiting for private industry to do this for us.

The corporations with the borrowing power to build such plants are waiting to see if we will give enough concessions and pay a high enough price to make this a quick payback and longterm lucrative licence to print money. We can't blame greedy corporations for that.

The real question is why is BC not willing to invest into its OWN infrastructure for long term payback and security.

We are willing to spend endless money on the Olympics which last no time compared to investing in critically needed infrastructure which can last for decades.

Getting rid of BC Rail (which allowed the development of a large part of our province)at a time when it had began to be commercially viable was a mistake we will surely and dearly pay for.

Call the crown corporations socalist or communistic, but also call the alternative for what it really is; corporate greed at our expense.