Chinese builders take to B.C. wood
A Chinese construction worker uses a wooden handsaw to build a roof truss in Yangpu Sunday.
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VICTORIA – The familiar whine of the Skilsaw isn't heard on residential construction sites in China.
In the coastal city of Yangpu, workers are hauling high-grade B.C. lumber up to the roof of a six-storey concrete apartment building, then cutting it for trusses using old-fashioned hand saws. The trusses are then assembled with hammer and nails, rather than the air nailing systems and factory truss assembly used here.
Forests Minister Pat Bell and a delegation of B.C. industry CEOs stood on that rooftop Sunday, the first day of their week-long lumber sales trip to China and Japan. In a phone interview after the visit, Bell said the contractor doing the roof replacement job was pleased with his crew's quick progress despite their primitive tools.
His earlier roof systems used trusses made of angle iron, hauled up to the roof, cut with torches and welded together.
China is upgrading thousands of these six-storey walk-ups after catastrophic damage to such buildings in the 2008 Sichuan earthquake killed thousands of people. B.C. producers have an initial contract for 50 roof replacements, along with wooden interior partitions to replace concrete walls with a thinner, more flexible support.
As big as that deal could potentially be, an agreement signed Monday in Shanghai could eventually prove to be bigger. Federal Natural Resources Minister Lisa Raitt was on hand with $800,000 to fund construction of a wood-frame demonstration building for affordable housing in Shanghai.
A hybrid of concrete and wood frame may emerge as the model for a building program of typically Chinese proportions.
The city of Shanghai alone expects to build 20 million square metres of affordable housing by 2012 to accommodate its urbanizing population, and the Chinese national budget for affordable housing is $141 billion.
The B.C. delegation also visited a busy warehouse owned by China National Building Materials, one of 11 built around the country by B.C.'s biggest Chinese lumber customer.
Lumber in the warehouse carried labels from Canfor, Tolko, WFP, Interfor, West Fraser, Conifex and Dunkley Lumber.
Sales of B.C. lumber in China are expected to be 1.4 billion board feet this year, double last year's total, and Bell said the fastest growth is in the higher-grade lumber for things like roof trusses.
The goal is for B.C. sales to reach four million board feet in another two years.
"That would represent well in excess of 30 per cent of the total production of the province of B.C in 2011," Bell said. "That gives us the diversity that we need for far better positioning in terms of dealing with the Americans going forward."
Bell also has meetings arranged with Chinese companies interested in buying pulp and paper mills. A Chinese company is considering buying the bankrupt Pope & Talbot pulp mill in Mackenzie, and efforts are also being made to interest buyers in the Eurocan pulp and paper plant in Kitimat, recently idled by West Fraser.
newsroom@surreyleader.com
