A trade event in Whistler earlier this month was designed to show off locally manufactured forest products, but the real strategy was to get international investors hooked on B.C. wood.
The 2010 Global Buyers Mission shoehorned 220 international buyers, 90 companies and a host of architects, builders, planners and government representatives into the Whistler Conference Centre to talk about B.C.’s value-added wood products.
Those products include everything from log and timber-frame homes to specialty lumber, windows, doors, cabinets, mouldings and flooring.
Last year’s conference generated more than $20 million in investment, but the three-day event this year was about more than sales figures.
“What we’re seeing is markets are picking up in Asia around the demand for wood products … from that perspective these people are coming to look at the value-added stuff, but it gives us an opportunity to talk about responsible sourcing,” said Isabelle Des Chęnes, vice-president of market relations at the Forest Products Association of Canada (FPAC). “That’s where Canadians hold an advantage in terms of the quality of our fibre and environmental [practices].”
In other words, visit B.C. for the innovative products but stay for the quality of the wood.
The strategy builds on the Liberal government’s continuing initiative to pull the province’s forestry sector out of a depression that’s largely the result of the U.S. housing collapse.
According to the government’s 2008-09 annual report, almost four-dozen mills have closed permanently or indefinitely in B.C. since 2007, affecting nearly 10,000 mill workers.
But Forests Minister Pat Bell has been hot on the heels of China’s appetite for raw materials and has made numerous trade missions to Asia recently in an effort to wean the sector from its dependence on the U.S.
In June, Victoria announced a $9.2 million program to hire marketing people in Asia to promote B.C. wood products (see “B.C. wood campaign puts feet on the ground in Asia” – issue 1084, August 3-9).
Brian Hawrysh, CEO of BC Wood, said this month’s event continued that strategy. “It’s a global market place,” Hawrysh told Busines in Vancouver, “and we are dealing with a very stiff competition all over the world.”
BC Wood, a non-profit association, hosted the Whistler buyers’ mission with funding from Natural Resources Canada, FPAC, Industry Canada and the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade. The focus of this year’s event was to convince buyers that B.C. wood producers sell more than two-by-fours.
“We’re very pleased with the results that we’ve had over the years and we see the industry is slowly shifting a bit of focus to the value-added sector,” Hawrysh said.
And that’s also part of the government’s strategy.
In 2009, it released a report that said between 1990 and 2000, on average, Canada’s forest sector generated $123 of GDP per cubic metre of wood fibre.
That’s compared with $290 in the U.S. and $664 in Japan, the report said.
Value-added products such as flooring and pre-fabricated buildings could therefore wring more value out of every cubic metre of wood than traditional lumber sales.
But despite the focus on innovative wood products, plain old commodity sales still garner the most revenue for B.C.
In 2006, softwood lumber, board and pulp and paper sales generated $13.4 billion in revenue for the province; value-added products generated $4 billion.
“There’s no doubt the commodity industry is the driver in the province and will always be the mainstay,” Hawrysh said.
“It’s just that more and more attention is being focused on the value-added sector.”
While the buyers’ mission promotes the broader B.C. forestry sector, it also focuses much-needed attention on the province’s value-added manufacturers, many of which are small and medium-sized businesses.
“It really is a way to engage these buyers in a cost-effective way,” Hawrysh said. “The alternative is for some of these small companies to get on a plane and fly around the world, which is expensive.”