In the bustling port city of Dalian, about 450 kilometres southeast of Beijing, British Columbia sometimes doesn’t seem all that far away. Delegates from the 2015 Forestry Asia Trade Mission experienced that feeling first-hand as they toured two factories where B.C. lumber is manufactured into products for the Chinese marketplace.

Quacent Prefabricated Homes uses Canadian lumber and a modern Canadian building system to create wood frame homes. Established in 2007, the company has demonstrated that a wood construction business is viable in China. Quacent builds chalets for China’s growing tourism resort sector and also builds structural insulated panels that highlight wood’s thermal and environmentally friendly characteristics.

Longhua Wooden Products Co., Ltd. manufactures a wide range of furniture, wood panels and landscaping architecture products at two factories in Dalian. The company imports several different types of wood and wood products from Canada and the United States, including hemlock, Douglas fir and spruce-pine-fir milled lumber. About 7% of Canadian softwood lumber exports to China are used in furniture. Trade mission delegates learned which types of wood are preferred for specific applications.

Trade missions are a critical part of British Columbia’s strategy to diversify its international trading partners and secure new investment, propelling economic activity and job creation throughout the province.

Quote:

Minister of Forests, Lands and Natural Resource Operations Steve Thomson –

“Today’s tours provided opportunities to see how high-quality wood products from British Columbia are being used by companies in China. It was also great to meet with the company representatives to learn how B.C. wood is helping to make their businesses successful.”

Quick Facts:

• Dalian is China’s northernmost warm water port and a major shipping centre. Classified as a “sub-provincial” city, it has a population of over six million people and a GDP worth $125 billion.
• China is B.C.’s second largest market for wood products after the United States and the province’s largest market for wood in Asia.
• In 2014, 7.7 million cubic metres of commodity wood products were sold to China, worth $1.4 billion.

Learn More:

Follow the Forestry Asia Trade Mission updates online: https://news.gov.bc.ca/stories/2015-forestry-trade-mission-to-asia

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BC Jobs Plan: http://engage.gov.bc.ca/bcjobsplan/