Over a thousand participants including BC Forests Minister Doug Donaldson are at the 2019 WoodRise Conference.
It’s being held in Quebec City and runs until Friday where the province is touting the value of engineered wood products and how that can help companies in the north dig out of the tough economic stretch the forestry sector is in.
Donaldson begged the question to wood producers in BC on how much more profitable these products are compared to a regular piece of dimensional lumber.
“If you took that piece of dimensional lumber that goes into it and sold it as a piece of dimensional lumber versus the engineered wood product what’s the price difference and it’s about a five times price difference increase when you have an engineered wood product.”
“That’s exactly the aim of our government is in maximizing value over volume. In other words, getting more value out of every log that comes out of the forest and the engineered wood products that go into the mid-rise to high-rise buildings is a great example of that.”
He adds if we have more companies producing these products, they will be able to withstand the higher log costs were seeing.
“If we have more companies producing these products they’re going to be able to obtain more for the dimensional wood that goes into them and that allows companies to produce that dimensional wood to absorb the higher log costs and this makes the whole economic picture more viable.”
“More workers are able to retain their jobs and then we have more jobs in the engineered wood products as well and in the harvesting sector too, that model is what it’s all about in maximizing the value of volume.”
Over a thousand people are participating in the conference, which includes 20 international delegations and 30 international speakers.
The convention wraps up on Friday.