Despite the continuing depressed housing market in the U.S., the number of people employed in the forest sector has increased in British Columbia over 2009, according to data provided by B.C. Forests Minister Pat Bell on Thursday.
Largely attributed to increases in the logging sector, employment is 33.8 per cent higher in the first 11 months of the year over 2009. Bell noted that the timber harvest has increased 70.1 per cent on the coast over last year, and 24.7 per cent in the Interior.
Releasing the data to reporters on a conference call, Bell outlined that employment in the logging sector had increased in the first 11 months of this year to 17,800 from 13,300 during the same period in 2009. Employment in the solid wood sector - largely sawmills - has increased to 28,200 from 26,000; while there had been a decline in the pulp and paper sector to 10,100 from 11,400.
Bell acknowledged that the forest sector has not recovered to previous levels, but argued that it was a historic day for the province's forest sector as export losses to the U.S. are being made up in Asia, particularly by exponential increases in China.
About six billion board feet of lumber has been shipped to the United States - British Columbia's largest market for decades - in the past three years, which is down from historical levels of 10-11 billion board feet. However, B.C. is expected to ship 2.6 billion board feet of lumber to China this year, up from almost nothing six years ago, and another 1.2 billion board feet of lumber to Japan.
"I think it's a red letter day for the forest industry," said Bell, the MLA for Prince George-Mackenzie.
British Columbia's forest sector has been hammered in the past several years from a combination of the U.S. housing collapse, a global financial recession, the increasing value of the Canadian dollar to the U.S. currency, and falling newsprint demand in North America.
While some shuttered sawmills have resumed production in northern and central B.C., others remain closed. Winton Global and Canfor's Rustad Bros. sawmill remain closed, and Canfor recently announced that its Clear Lake sawmill will be shut down permanently in January.
A Canfor plywood plant in Prince George that burned down in 2008 was not rebuilt.
There have also been permanent sawmill closures in Quesnel, Fort St. James, Terrace and Mackenzie.
A newsprint mill was also shuttered permanently in Mackenzie, and a liner board closed permanently in Kitimat.
The accounting firm PwC said this week that rising demand from China helped drive a profitable quarter for Western Canadian producers. It's the first time since the second quarter of 2000 that all nine of Western Canada's major producers posted profits in the third-quarter.
Net earnings for Western producers totalled $179 million during the quarter, compared with a loss of $201 million in the same quarter a year earlier, the report said.
"It's good news for the industry, especially in B.C., to capitalize on rising Chinese demand," said Michael Armstrong, director of forestry, paper and packaging practice at PwC.
