On Fri, 19 Sep 2003 21:55:19 -0600, Jeff Clausen wrote:
Wood prices in general including softwood lumber, plywood, osb and other
panel products have gone up since the start of the year for many reasons.
One is that the exhange rate with the Canadian dollar has gone from $.60 to
$.73 since the first of the year. This coupled with the counter-vailing
duty has slowed the flow of lumber products into the US from Canada. The
same is true for imported lumber form Europe where the Euro has strengthened
from roughly par with the US dollar to about $1.13. Two, the southeast
timber industry has experienced a very wet spring and summer which has
affected log supply to certain mills. Third, is this summers fire season.
Many mills in the Inland Rocky Mountains on both sides of the border have
been shut out of the woods since mid July. In southern British Columbia
this combination has forced many mills to shut down or curtail. The net
effect is a dip in supply which may continue for some time. Sawmills in the
inland northwest are now able to get back to logging now that we have had
some rain and snow, but they will be playing catch-up in their log decks
between now and breakup next Spring. As far as price fixing in the industry,
I wish it were possible. I work for a sawmill in Northwest Montana. We
sell all of our product to the wholesale market as do most other sawmills
except for those that sell directly to the big box stores (i.e. the Borg).
Our only control over the price of our final product is the ability to tell
the wholesaler "NO" if we feel the price is too low and you can only do that
for so long. There are some large national wholesale companies that try to
influence the market by timing purchases and sales but the idea that the
large "evil corporations" are gouging the markets does not hold water. I
work for a small family owned sawmill so I have no affiliation to the larger
"evil corporations". In fact it has been my experience that most big
company sawmills usually kill any good market by dumping lumber at the end
of every month to keep the cash flow numbers up and the quarterly stock
prices propped up. If there has been any price gouging it has been at the
retail level. The average WWPA framing lumber index (the price that mills
receive for their lumber) has been hovering near 20 year lows for the last
several years, yet I have not seen any such reduction in prices at the local
lumber yards. My two cents worth.
Jeff Clausen
It apparently isn't because we don't have any more timber. The first few
pics in this album show some excess on the way to Japan last month:
http://www.winterburn.net/photo/inde...Trip/Harstene/
a few show the wiley presto-log (or is that particle board) in the wild...
-Doug