Sawlog prices have trended downward throughout the world over the past two years with the GSPI Index being 14.3% lower in the 3Q/16 than in the 3Q/14, reports the Wood Resource Quarterly. The GSPI sawlog price index fell again in the 3Q/16 and was 21% below its all-time high five years ago, as reported in the Wood Resource…
The industry needs to champion wood, lest we lose the culture and the infrastructure that has built up around its use. The world can often seem too complicated for its own good. It’s a big reason some people, such as I, live in a rural place, where things are simpler to some degree. Through this…
If it’s true that business hates uncertainty, then the B.C. forest industry is in for some ill feeling in 2017. Finding opportunity in the face of that uncertainty is the challenge for the coming year. The biggest challenge comes from the United States, which has initiated trade investigations that are expected to result in duties…
Two northwestern Ontario First Nation communities are exploring the idea of restoring ferry service to haul wood to a potential forest products operation. Beginning back in September, Lac Seul and Slate Falls First Nations, with their industry partners in tow, began studying the economics of moving Crown wood from harvesting sites, across the actual lake…
Which B.C. forest products company was first to sell two-by-fours to the picky buyers of Japan? How about high-grade wood pellets for home heating in Italy? It was Nechako Lumber, a privately owned forest products company in the northwestern B.C. community of Vanderhoof, says CEO Alan Fitzpatrick. And he has other examples of where his…
It’s been more than two months since Tolko Industries announced they’d be shutting down production at the Merritt mill and tomorrow is the day workers will be sent packing. The union representing those employees, United Steelworkers, says it is disappointed with the way the company handled the shut down, saying workers should have been entitled…
No one cares more about Nova Scotia’s forest than the 6,100 forest industry professionals who make their living taking care of it. Our forests are a dynamic and renewable resource. We harvest our forests and they grow back, often healthier and more productive than they were before. They provide our province with environmental, economic, social…
A federal tribunal has ruled a Vancouver Island First Nation should get more than $13.8 million in compensation for government failure to ensure it was properly compensated for two decades of timber harvesting. On Monday, the Canadian Specific Claims Tribunal awarded the Port Alberni-area Huu-ay-aht First Nations that sum in connection with logging that took…
If there is one certainty about the future of the B.C. forest industry, it is the growing participation of indigenous people whose traditional territories take in most of the Crown land in the province. Aboriginal leaders assumed responsibility for ecosystem-based harvesting in the Great Bear Rainforest agreement, mapping out protected areas with the B.C. government….
The 203 employees of Merritt’s Tolko sawmill report for their last week at the mill Monday. The workers ran the last logs through the mill last week and now are shutting down the site. The mill closes this Friday, with no reopening scheduled. Some employees have worked at the mill for decades. Some are retiring….