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May/June 2007 Page 25
APA -
Continued from page 24
research in Taiwan, promotes research
of construction engineering technology,
fire safety, disaster mitigation, and green
building methods.
APA Applauds ITC Review
of Chinese Imports
APA President Dennis Hardman
applauded a request for an International
Trade Commission (ITC) review of
Chinese hardwood plywood imports,
saying he believed it would demonstrate
that those products often are improperly
and in many cases even fraudulently
labeled.
The ITC review was requested recently
by Senate Finance Committee
Chairman Max Baucus of Montana. The
Office of the United States Trade
Representative (USTR) also has filed a
World Trade Organization (WTO) hardwood
plywood subsidies case against
China. APA has provided import statistics
and other relevant information to the
office of Oregon’s U.S. Senator Ron
Wyden, who has helped champion the
campaign against illegally subsidized
plywood imports.
Hardman said that although the
requested ITC review targets only
Chinese hardwood plywood and would
cover a variety of concerns, such as
dumping, illegal subsidies, tariff misclassification,
and illegal logging, he hopes it
would help draw greater attention to the
significant problem of Chinese industry
counterfeit trademarks, absence of
trademarks, inaccurate grade claims
and substandard product performance.
•
British Columbia
Business Trends
Continued from page 2
their product domestically (within B.C.
and the rest of Canada) and almost the
same amount into the U.S. About 5% of
production goes into each Japan and
Europe.
Weather & Water Affecting
the Industry
What affects the primaries has significant
affect on the secondary manufacturers.
Adding to what everyone knows
about the log and subsequent wood
shortages, a two-month towing strike
has caused more problems up and
down the mighty Fraser River, affecting
large and small operators alike. We
were unable to reach anyone at the
major towing companies (I suspect all
management are out on the water moving
booms), but Ken Voight, Operations
Manager at S & R Sawmills in Port Kells
commented that “we had a bad winter
for logging, what with the weather and a
few other factors, and now the few logs
that are out there are hard to get at due
to the towing strike”. S & R has five
custom cutting mills and estimate that
they are getting half of their logs – and
that is thanks to management working
the tugs for the four major services in
the area, along with a few independents.
If the strike doesn’t end soon though,
there will be another major delay. By mid
May, it is predicted by another mill upriver
that the water will be running too fast
and high to move anything. This is a
pretty normal seasonal event, but is certainly
going to compound the problem of
the current shortage of logs.
Gary Ley, a spokesman for Western
Forest Products said that they were not
unduly affected by the strike – that it was
more of an inconvenience, than anything
else. They were able to shift the
schedule around and use additional
suppliers to off-set any potential shortages
of moving logs into the yards.
However, in a recent article in the
Vancouver Sun by correspondent
Gordon Hamilton, Western’s president
Reynold Hert did indicate that both logging
and lumber production were off significantly
because of the severe weather.
Over the winter, roads on the company’s
coastal timberlands were washed
out, slopes became too saturated with
water to be logged, and towboats were
sent scurrying into sheltered coves for
days at a time, unable to deliver what
logs they had to company sawmills.
The extreme weather really hit home in
Port Alberni, where, at one point,
Western’s Somass sawmill was forced
to shut down when a creek burst its
banks and flowed right through the mill.
Other mills closed when they could not
get enough logs.
The storms during November and
December alone knocked Western’s log
production down 500,000 cubic metres
— 25 per cent — to 1.6 million cubic
metres during the fourth quarter.
Western’s Chief Financial Officer, Paul
Ireland said the log shortage resulted in
a 17 percent drop in lumber production
during the fourth quarter. Instead of 326
million board feet of lumber, the company
produced 271 million, a decline of 55
million board feet.
“Unit costs were higher than would otherwise
be the case as a result,” Ireland
said. “Both our timberlands and our
manufacturing operations were negatively
impacted by the unusual weather
we encountered on the West Coast of
British Columbia.”
Western did not release financial figures
on the weather impact but were
able to recoup some of the costs from
the storms by realizing higher sales
prices for its lumber products. Average
prices increased from $739 to $782 per
thousand board feet from the third quarter
to the fourth quarter.
Hert said the weather events can be
coast-wide or localized, pointing out that
the Island’s west coast around Port
Alberni was hit particularly hard. Even
on days when the weather is calm at the
company’s Duncan head office, tugs
towing loads of logs only a few kilometres
away in nearby Stuart Channel
have been forced to seek shelter from
strong winds.
WASHINGTON -
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•
ways to make up funding shortfalls for
rural schools and communities wracked
by declining timber sales and shrinking
property tax bases.
During the Senate’s recent 51-47 vote
for an emergency war spending package
that sets a 2008 withdrawal date
from Iraq, the money for rural districts,
nearly $5 billion across 39 states, was
added, which binds the two funding
packages.
President Bush has threatened to veto
the bill and has labeled the legislation as
the Democrats’ “arbitrary” troop withdrawal
timeline, as well as for other
spending provisions he derided as
“pork.”
However, with the help of Oregon
Democrat Ron Wyden, a provision was
backed that added $4.7 billion into a
program that helps timber-dependent
counties make up the losses from
declining lumber sales on federal lands,
primarily located in the Pacific
Northwest.
Also included in the Senate bill are $20
billion in domestic initiatives for flood
relief along the Gulf Coast, compensation
for crop losses, drought assistance
and low-income heating subsidies.
The Senate bill would provide states
like Alaska upwards of $10 million a year
over the next five years under a rural
schools plan and its companion program,
called Payment in Lieu of Taxes.
One of the areas most affected is in
Alaska’s heavily timbered Southeast
Panhandle.
Craig called the law establishing the
rural programs “a lifeline for our timberdependent
communities. Letting the law
die is not an option.”
Bush’s Budget Reductions
Impact Forest Service
Budget reductions proposed by the
Bush Administration to eliminate the federal
deficit by 2012 include a significant
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