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A new company with roots in Prince George and Quesnel has bought and re-opened a small sawmill in McBride which will send half of its production to China.
National Choice Specialty Wood's re-opening of the former Dore River sawmill in McBride, about 200 kilometres east of Prince George, will create 10 jobs.
On the same day as the mill re-opening was announced, B.C. Forests Minister Pat Bell released figures for China that showed a record-breaking 257 million board feet of lumber was exported to the emerging market in August. The province has now reached exports to China of 1.5 billion board feet, and is on track to reach the 2.5 billion mark this year.
Bell said the mill re-opening is proof that B.C.'s China strategy is paying off for large and small-sized mills. "This is the fourth mill this year to dedicate a significant portion of its production to the growing China market," said Bell, the MLA for Prince George-Mackenzie.
Earlier this year, Canfor Corp. announced it was re-opening its Quesnel sawmill to serve the Chinese market.
The McBride sawmill is expected to produce six million to nine million board feet a year, which is dwarfed by regular-sized mills which put out about 250 million board feet a year.
The sawmill will be fed by the McBride Community Forest and other local sources.
"Opening this specialty sawmill was an easy choice," said National Choice Bio Fuels chief executive Denis Pelletier. "There's a demand for lumber, a skilled workforce and an economically viable fibre supply, and we were able to bring these together to make it all work," said Pelletier.
The McBride Community Forest is the largest employer in McBride and can harvest up 50,000 cubic metres of timber per year, about 1,000 logging truck loads.
National Choice Bio Fuels is a new company whose principles also include Prince George-businessman T.J. Grewal, and Quesnel businessmen Jeff Paquin and Brad Powell.
National Choice Bio Fuels has also partnered with the Red Bluff Band in Quesnel, also known as the Lhtako Dene Nation, to build a pellet plant.
The small pellet plant operation, scheduled to open in the spring of 2011, will use low-grade, mountain pine beetle-killed timber to produce wood pellets. The pellet operation is also expected to include a sawmill that will ship lumber to China.
The B.C. government just signed an agreement that allows the Red Bluff Band to harvest 75,000 cubic metres of beetle-killed timber annually for the next 15 years in the Quesnel timber supply area.
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B.C. lumber exports to China hit 1.5 billion board feet by the end of August, putting the province on track to hit the 2.5 billion board foot mark this year.
It's well above last year's shipments, which totalled 1.63 billion board feet.
B.C. Forests Minister Pat Bell, who is bullish on the Chinese market, hopes to see the province's exports hit four billion board feet by 2011.
Just six years ago, lumber shipments to China were below 60 million board feet, and accounted for less than one per cent of B.C.'s exports by volume. In 2009, shipments to China accounted for 11.5 per cent of B.C.'s exports, according to B.C. Statistics.
The value of lumber being shipped to China also appears to be increasing.
The value of shipments to China through the first eight months of the year was $342 million, up 71 per cent compared to $200 million for the same period in 2009.
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