Year: 2008

Remember when it was environmentalists who got blamed for lost jobs
in the logging industry?
Lance

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“It is projected that close to a million repossessed houses will be
on the market this year. For each house that is repossessed there is
one that won’t be built, and consequently, lumber that won’t be
needed.

“According to Dingwall, Jamestown Lumber is not the only mill to
suffer from the troubled market. Of the seven integrated sawmills in
the province only two remain open.”
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http://www.thepacket.ca/index.cfm?sid=119727&sc=368
  Last updated at 4:08 PM on 24/03/08

Mill shuts down
Global economic events force local business to close

GAVIN SIMMS
The Packet

It’s not the Christmas present Bob Dingwall wanted to give his employees.

His business was expected to resume operations following the usual
holiday break. Instead, workers were told there was no more work at
Jamestown Lumber.

The mill, which used to operate all year-round, is facing a major
quandary. The decision not to reopen the plant was based on a number
of reasons, but three in particular.

“The opportunity to ship lumber to the states has come to an end due
to the equal value of the Canadian dollar, so there’s an immeasurable
amount of lumber trying to find a home in a relatively small domestic
Canadian market,” explains Dingwall.

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Banks are also in layoff mode, slashing jobs that
were once devoted to pumping up the home
construction boom in the U.S. and elsewhere.
Recently, many in the business and financial
community have said that the bust of this boom
was predictable, and many were indeed predicting
it before it hit.

Were job losses in the logging industry equally
predictable???? And why are they reported as if
they were separate trends??
Lance

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” … feeling the effects of the decreased demand for lumber,
plywood and other residential construction materials.”
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Arkansas Online
Tuesday, April 29, 2008

Housing slump taking whack out of logging
Fuel expenses, mill closures double-team timber industry

By Nancy Cole

LITTLE ROCK – As Arkansas sawmills close their
doors in response to the U.S. housing-market
meltdown and chaos in the nation’s mortgage
markets, the ripple effect has spread well beyond
the mill workers.

Loggers, logging-equipment dealers, timberland
owners, and many retail and professional
businesses in south Arkansas also are feeling the
effects of the decreased demand for lumber,
plywood and other residential construction
materials.

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Vancouver Sun (Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada)
Wednesday, April 30, 2008

Shutdowns, layoffs hit largest West Coast forest company
Western Forest Products closes most of its logging operations as demand drops

http://www.canada.com/vancouversun/news/business/story.html?id=1d0dc9b6-3c22-41d5-9e48-911c8fb29257
Gordon Hamilton
The West Coast’s largest forest company, Western
Forest Products, announced Tuesday it is shutting
down most of its logging operations and laying
off more than 800 loggers and contractors as
demand for wood products continues to tumble
world-wide.

Logging is to shut down at the end of next week
so the forest company can bring its log
inventories in line with its lumber orders,
Western’s chief operating officer Duncan Kerr
said Tuesday.

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A binge of lending fed a housing boom that has, unsurprisingly, gone
bust.  A binge of logging also fed that same boom.

Now the bust has affected the lending industry. It should be little
surprise that the logging industry is also taking hits from its own
excesses.

Many in the business and financial community have said, obviously
enough, that the exercise of restraint by the lending industry could
have prevented the current economic crisis. Because the lenders were
unable or unwilling to restrain themselves, many now say that
government has to do it for them.

While none seem to have seen it (yet), similar restraint by the
logging industry would have done the same thing, because houses can’t
be built with money, but require an equally important input from
wood.  In the final analysis, the forests may as well have fallen on
the banks. The speed of their felling certainly brought the logging
industry into trouble, but the story going untold is that lending and
logging are players united on a common stream of money, and can’t
realistically be treated as if they were separate and independent.
Lance

Wall Street Journal
May 2, 2008 9:12 a.m. EDT

Weyerhaeuser Posts Loss Amid Weak Housing Demand
By MIKE BARRIS and ADAM MANZOR

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