COVER STORY
years to grow back enough for harvesting, it’s going to take a long
time for the supply to recover.”
Michael Almond, general manager, North American sales for
Canfor said in a recent webinar on the WRLA website, “We’ve been
experiencing the mountain pine beetle epidemic over the last 20
years. Looking back at the Western SPF lumber production in B.C.
in 2005/06, it stood at between 14 and 15 billion board feet. We
were harvesting a lot of mountain pine beetle forest in a massive
salvage effort to keep the quality of the log before it deteriorated. As
a result, we had to have some under-harvesting for the next 20 years
to help manage the life cycle of the forest.”
Almond also said that with the 2008-09 recession, lumber pro-duction
was curtailed significantly, recovering by 2015 to an 11 to
12 billion board foot harvest level. However, things weren’t settled
yet. “In 2018-19 lumber production underwent further curtail-ment
owing to some permanent mill closures. As well, mills were
shifting into greener SPF stands of forest – a more valuable log and
greener fibre. This meant we had to invest a lot of money over the
last decade into technology, drying capabilities and optimization in
saw and planing mills to extract as much high-grade yield in prod-ucts
as possible from this higher costing log.
“With the annual cut already reduced several times previously,
our new normal is probably eight or nine billion board feet, and we
will probably remain at that level for the next 10 to 15 years.”
Then came the pestilence
“In March this year, with the spread of COVID-19, the demand
for pretty much everything fell off the cliff – that’s the best way
to describe it,” said Kovach. “Stores closed, mills shut down, and
demand dried up as well. No one knew what was going to happen.
“Depending on where they were and their situations, some mills
had to close from two to six weeks. No production was happening.
Once they could get up and running again, limited staff was allowed
in the building, but only one shift at a time. These mills generally
run on two shifts per day so it was very difficult later to get back to
normal production levels. Some mills had other issues with yards
full of product ready to ship, but not going anywhere. Even if they
were operating, they had nowhere to store their products.”
Almond notes
that 85 per cent
of Canfor’s mills
operate on rail
tracks and are
now almost back
to transportation
levels seen before
COVID-19 hit.
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