Jobs, tourism and innovation minister Pat Bell will lead a March 27-31 trade mission to Beijing to show the Chinese housing industry the ecological benefits of building with wood.
The 39-member delegation includes 15 senior executives from Ainsworth, Aspen Planers, Canfor, Hampton Forest Products, Interfor, Sino Energy Group, Teal-Jones Group, Western and West Fraser. They will be joined by representatives from Conifex, Tolko, two forestry trade associations, the UBC Faculty of Forestry and research institute FPInnovations.
The B.C. delegation will discuss market needs with vice-minister Qiu Baoxing from the Chinese government’s Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development (MOHURD).
Many of the trade mission activities in Beijing will revolve around the Green Building Show, a MOHURD-sponsored conference expected to draw more than 2,000 visitors from the Chinese construction industry.
As part of BC’s marketing strategy, a three-storey, nine-unit prefabricated apartment will be assembled in 72 hours at the conference to highlight the speed and ease of building with wood.
In addition to generating sales orders for B.C. lumber, the delegation will travel to Tianjin to check progress on four-storey wood-frame residential buildings under construction in the Tianjin economic development area.
For the fifth consecutive year, B.C. lumber exports to China set new highs in 2010 with approximately 4.6 million cubic metres shipped at a value of about $687 million. This figure is bolstered by an October 2010 trade mission that generated sales of 418 million board feet of lumber.