New lumber sales in China
November 26, 2008 | Caledonia Courier
A trade delegation to China led by B.C. Minister of Forests and Range Pat Bell has secured 83 million board feet in new lumber sales.
The four-day delegation included CEOs, vice presidents and other top executives from Canfor, Interfor, West Fraser, Tolko and other major B.C. lumber producers. The sales include a mix of coastal hemlock for landscaping and dimensional lumber from the Interior.
If that 83 million board feet in sales could be repeated every month, it would increase B.C.’s exports to China to nearly one billion board feet per year, Bell said.
“It’s been a very successful trip,” he said. “This is a large market opportunity for us. I think the immediate opportunity is wooden roofs in existing and new buildings.”
Bell and the delegates toured a site in Shanghai where 38 low-rise apartment buildings were having Canadian-designed wooden roof trusses installed. The Shanghai government plans to install roof trusses on approximately 10,000 low-rise, concrete apartment buildings prior to hosting Expo 2010.
Forestry Innovation Investment Ltd., a Crown corporation mandated to promote B.C.’s forest industry, constructed the first three of over 70 wooden roof trusses built in the Shanghai area, Bell said. The rest of the roof trusses were built by local contractors for the Shanghai Housing Bureau.
Forestry Innovation Investment is currently providing quality control on site to ensure buildings are constructed safely, Bell said, but once Chinese contractors are more experienced that support won’t be needed.
“There are 38 cities of over one million people in just the Yangtze River delta. There is literally tens of thousands of these buildings,” Bell said. “If we could capture the roof trusses, infill walls and partition walls, that could be two to three billion board feet just in the Yangtze River delta.”
The wood for constructing the roof trusses alone could represent 1.6 to 1.8 billion board feet per year, he said. Currently Japan, B.C.’s second-largest international customer after the U.S., purchases about 1.2 billion board feet per year.
In 2007, B.C. lumber exports to China totaled 493 million board feet.
“We may not quite get to a billion this year. (But) I think four billion by 2011 is very realistic,” he said. “We’re a supplier of choice.”
Currently 74 per cent of all new construction in China is four-to-six-storey apartment buildings, Bell said. If half of the new apartments being built in China used wood-frame technology for their upper four stories it would consume 25 billion board feet of lumber per year – 40 per cent of B.C.’s possible production.
The Chinese market is, “indifferent,” to the blue stain found in trees killed by mountain pine beetles, Bell added.
“The competitor on this product is steel. (But) building angle-iron trusses can take months,” he said. “The truss on a building next to (our hotel) was built in three days. The contractors love it, the workers love it.”
The demand for wood trusses has outstripped the production of the single truss assembly plant in Shanghai, Bell said. Bell said the delegation is working with Shanghai contractors to locate additional truss-building services.
The roof trusses in Shanghai and earthquake reconstruction projects in Mianyang, Baoshan and Beichuan are building awareness of wood construction in China, Bell said, but there is still a lot of work needed.
“Coming to Shanghai... is like building a project in Quebec and assuming people in B.C. have heard of it. It’s a huge country,” Bell said. “It’s a good first step.”
