Minister, lumber CEOs head for Asia

VICTORIA – The cash-strapped, carbon-stingy B.C. government is going ahead with an overseas sales trip to China and Japan in November, trying to revive a forest industry that has suffered an unprecedented collapse along with the U.S. housing market.

It's the second trip in as many years for Forests Minister Pat Bell, who will again be joined by CEOs of forest companies including Canfor, Interfor, West Fraser and Western Forest Products. Bell says targeted specialty product marketing in China has produced sales heading past a billion board feet for the first time this year, a benchmark only reached before with high-end wood sales to Japan.

B.C. lumber sales to the U.S., historically in a class by itself at up to 10 billion board feet annually, has fallen to about six billion, and Bell says it may never return to the height of the housing bubble.

Bank of Canada Governor Mark Carney concurs.

"The issue is that the global growth model that has been heavily reliant on the U.S. consumer has been ultimately proved unsustainable," Carney said during a recent visit to Victoria.

The trade mission will stop in Shanghai, Beijing and the 2008 earthquake zone where last year they visited a town called Beichuan.

"This was a community of 20,000 people, basically a little bit bigger than a Quesnel or a Williams Lake, and half the people were killed in the earthquake," Bell said.

An agreement to renovate 150 concrete apartment buildings with wood roof trusses and interior partition walls is seen as a possible breakthrough. Bell describes the scene in Shanghai where six-storey walkup apartment blocks stretch to the horizon, all susceptible to collapse in a quake.

B.C. recently approved six-storey wood construction for its own building code. That was to promote domestic lumber consumption, but Bell said it is a key to the Asia marketing effort.

B.C. participated in a "shake test" of a six-storey building in Japan. Constructed with a new kind of fastener between floors, the building was shaken on a huge platform at the same intensity as the 1995 Kobe quake, but for twice as long. When dismantled, cracks were confined to the drywall.

An earlier lumber trade push in Korea backfired, when buildings deteriorated quickly due to moisture damage. China has its own "leaky condo" problems with its traditional concrete, and had poor results retrofitting with steel roof trusses.

The B.C. and Canadian governments are also spending $13 million on demonstration projects, wood construction training and other marketing initiatives in China this year, up from $8.6 million last year.

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