Jobs, Tourism and Innovation Minister Pat Bell is lauding the opening of British Columbia's first cross laminated timber plant Thursday, which he believes could open up a new market as significant as an emerging lumber market in China.
The $13-million plant in Okanagan Falls will start production with 7.5 million board feet of lumber on one shift, but that could grow into billions of board feet in the next decade, Bell predicted. That kind of aggressive market growth would chart a similar bath in China, where in the past decade, lumber exports have grown from tens of millions of board feet to 2.8 billion board feet in 2010.
Any new, significant new market for lumber would benefit north-central B.C., which until recently, has been reliant on the U.S. housing market, still in the midst of a collapse.
"It opens the market to taller buildings, greater spans, institutional-type sector. And it really competes with the concrete tilt-up construction," said Bell, the MLA for Prince George-Mackenzie.
The province supported the new plant with a $2.5 million grant, with Ottawa chipping in another $3.2 million. The company, Structurlam, put in $7.5 million.
"In the same way that our glue-laminated beams offer an alternative to steel in long and complex spans, our CrossLam panels provide an alternative to concrete that uses local, renewable resources with compelling structural and environmental advantages," said Structurlam president Bill Downing.
Bell has been a proponent of cross-laminated timber, suggesting it could be used as a showcase in the promised Wood Innovation and Design Centre slated for downtown Prince George.
Cross-laminated timber -- known commonly as CLT -- is used in Europe but is new to the North American market. The first cross laminated timber plant in Canada was built in Quebec.
The CLT panels are constructed out of boards laminated in layers of opposite direction.
CLT allows the construction of taller wood building. A nine-storey building in Britain, constructed out of CLT, is now the world's tallest wood building.
An award-winning Vancouver architect recently told a Prince George audience that a study funded by the B.C. government and commissioned by the B.C. Wood Coalition has found that it's possible to construct buildings as high as 20 stories, and potentially as high as 30.
Asked if he could see CLT plants being built in Northern B.C., Bell said there is a challenge to create the market, a chicken-and-egg issue. In order for money to be invested in CLT plants there has to be market, but in order for a market to be developed, CLT has to be available, noted Bell.
