Bc Forest Products

It's time for Christy Clark to do her part for the Great Bear Rainforest

As a result, two B.C. premiers can take credit for saving this vast stretch of temperate rain forest. And there is room for one more. This week, Premier Christy Clark was offered a chance to add her name to the legacy.

Chapter 1: Brokering a deal

The battle for the Great Bear Rainforest – formerly known as the “central mid-coast timber supply area” – began 16 years ago with an innovative environmental campaign pioneered in Clayoquot Sound to persuade the industry’s customers to stop buying products made from old-growth timber.

With European buyers boycotting B.C.’s old-growth forest products, the industry was forced to do something it had never tried before: Collaborate with its critics.

A series of extraordinary meetings was held at the Metropolitan Hotel in Vancouver: timber barons sitting down with radical greens, negotiating a state of détente – the Standstill Agreement. Environmentalists stopped their market campaigns in exchange for the logging companies suspending operations in more than 100 watersheds in the region.

Chapter 2: Finding a champion

But a permanent deal wasn’t theirs to make: Most of the 64,000 hectares in the region is publicly owned Crown land, and most of it is subject to unsettled land claims. A political leader was needed who could negotiate government-to-government with first nations.

In 2001, premier Ujjal Dosanjh was heading into an election campaign with little hope for his unpopular New Democratic Party. Environmentalists and first nations leaders persuaded him there was a splashy opportunity to quell the long-running “war in the woods.”

A month after he made a commitment to preserve the region, his New Democratic Party was wiped out at the polls. The new government, led by Premier Gordon Campbell, was in a hurry to declare B.C. open for business, and showed little patience for complex land-use negotiations.

For a while, it looked like the whole deal was going to fall apart.

Chapter 3: Offering solutions

The greens and the forest industry continued their work, with the province looking on. They raised cash to help with their proposal for a transition to a new forestry model, and first nations leaders were ready to move forward.

In 2005, Pat Bell, the new forests minister, sat down with representatives from environmental groups and forestry executives.

“It just caught me totally off guard. They were 100-per-cent on board that the model needed to change,” Mr. Bell said in an interview this week. “I was stunned by the level of co-operation.

Recovering japanese economy 'open for business' | Forest Business ...

Photo By Ward Perrin

Robert Fouquet believes the potential for ramping up sales to earthquake-ravaged Japan is greater than ever. The vice-president of marketing and sales for Vancouverbased Ainsworth Engineered Canada LP says demand for his company’s structural wood panels in residential construction soared after the March disaster and that more Japanese builders now see the advantage of using them over traditional plywood.

“When the earthquake and tsunami struck, the phone lines in our office in Tokyo started to ring and there was an onslaught of inquiries coming in about buying our OSB [oriented strand board], because it disrupted Japan’s plywood mills, with a 30-per-cent loss in capacity.

“We reacted immediately by ramping up volumes of Japanese-grade OSB at our mills and met the demand.”

Ainsworth is one of many B.C. companies that are contributing financially to Japan’s earthquake relief, while growing new markets over the long term.

Despite the horror stories about flooded cities, ravaged infrastructure and damaged nuclear reactors, these companies remain bullish on opportunities in the Land of the Rising Sun -and the Japanese are happy they are.

Opportunity in a strengthening Japanese economy was a central theme at a recent seminar in downtown Vancouver on the pressures, challenges and opportunities following the earthquake.

Fouquet said the damage to Japan’s plywood mills prompted a sudden interest in products including softwood plywood from North America and hardwood plywood from Southeast Asia as well as OSB.

“As of the end of April, we were selling at double the rate relative to the period prior to March 11,” added Fouquet, who said Ainsworth is Japan’s leading supplier of OSB.

He noted that Ainsworth’s overseas sales -mainly to Japan -had already increased 37.5 per cent in 2010 over 2009, from $35.5 million to $48.8 million.

Ainsworth, one of 11 forest products companies contributing $500,000 to the Japan earthquake reconstruction under the umbrella of the Canada Wood Group, has been selling OSB to the country since 1994.

However, OSB -cut from small diameter logs into long thin strands that are glued together under intense heat and pressure -makes up just five per cent of the Japanese market for structural panels, a percentage Fouquet expects will rise significantly over the long term.

Meanwhile, the Japan Reengagement Seminar, which attracted dozens of participants including representatives of Foreign Affairs and International Trade Canada, the B.C. government, the Japanese government and the Japan External Trade Organization, concluded that it’s no time to pull back investment.

B.C. Forest Products

Sustainable Production of Wood and Non-Wood Forest Products

Non-timber forest products, medicinal herbs, fungi, edible fruits and nuts, and other natural products from the forest

Green gold, the forest industry in British Columbia

The Wealth of Forests, Markets, Regulation, and Sustainable Forestry