How one company's “value-added” plans are opening the door to more log exports and fewer forest industry jobs.
This story was originally published in Policy Note in March 2017
FOR MANY YEARS, TimberWest has exported more raw logs from British Columbia than all of its competitors save one. And a new move afoot by the company has both forest industry workers and environmental activists convinced that the company is laying the groundwork for even more exports in the years to come.
Work underway by TimberWest near a pulp mill in Crofton, south of Nanaimo, is setting the stage for the company to load even more raw logs into the holds of ocean freighters, a move that will earn the company higher returns for each raw log.
The move by the company to create what amounts to a new “value-added” raw log export facility comes at a time when TimberWest and Island Timberlands are already BC’s undisputed log export powerhouses.
A database maintained by the provincial government shows the two companies accounted for more than 44 per cent of the nearly 8.1 million cubic metres of raw logs that logging companies hoped to ship from the province in 2016.
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