While North America construction framing softwood lumber prices dropped a bit more last week, the decreases were much less than in previous weeks. Lumber prices did fall, but by a smaller amount than in recent weeks. New data releases for US pending homes sales and house prices, February and 1Q 2019 respectively, show slight improvements.…

In January, 2012, a sawmill in the community of Burns Lake, British Columbia, exploded, killing Robert Luggi Jr. and Carl Charlies. In April of that year, a similar blast consumed a Prince George, BC, sawmill, killing Alan Little and Glenn Roche. Many of the survivors suffered life-altering injuries – some are still unable to return…

A flurry of data on US real estate was released this week, with new housing starts, and new and existing home sales and house prices, all coming out Monday and Tuesday. Of great importance to the sawmilling industry is US new home sales: seasonally adjusted annual rate according to estimates from the joint release of…

Canfor Corporation announced April 24 it will be temporarily putting restrictions on operations at all of its British Columbia dimension mills. The restrictions will take effect on April 29 due to low lumber prices and the high cost of fibre. The curtailment will reduce Canfor’s production output by approximately 100 million board feet. Canfor has…

US new-home construction unexpectedly fell in March, said the US Commerce Department Friday, decelerating to the slowest pace since May 2017 and suggesting builders remain wary even as lower mortgage rates and steady wage gains offer support to consumers. For housing starts, this was the fifth negative Year-over-Year reading in a row (with March’s result…

The latest data of US new housing starts and of home sales, for March 2019, is not encouraging. At a time of year when wood sales would normally be hot, this housing market softness is doing nothing to improve already dropping North America construction framing softwood lumber prices. Last week, Canadian sawmills and companies were…

The reality is that Canada is “trapped” in an issue between the World Trade Organization and US President Donald Trump’s Administration. Knowledgeable insiders explain that the US is blocking appointments of adjudicators to the global trade resolution agency, seemingly in an effort to put pressure on the WTO to allow “zeroing” (a method of calculation…

Many phone calls and negotiations were made, but actual sales of North America softwood lumber last week were not an improvement over recent weeks. Sales stumbled again last week as both primary and secondary suppliers of Western Spruce-Pine-Fir lumber in the United States had to reduce their asking prices to move even small volumes. For…

Just as Canada is being tossed about like a pebble between two great forces with China’s ban on Canadian canola imports — supposedly due to the US extradition request and arrest in Vancouver, BC of a top executive at Hawuei last month — the World Trade Organization (WTO) is mired in a crisis of delayed…

Data from the BLS Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey (JOLTS), released Friday, indicate that construction job openings fell back in February but remain higher on a year-over-year basis, consistent with the ongoing challenge of the availability of labor for builders. The number of open construction jobs in the US totalled 286,000 for the month, compared…

As usual with the seemingly-permanent Softwood Lumber Dispute between Canada and the US, the latest trade ruling brings up more questions than it resolves. An almost undecipherable ruling out of the World Trade Organization on softwood lumber this week caused some great confusion, in no small part because it is both for and against both…

US rail traffic continued its slump in March, falling -5.2% to 2,022,934 carloads and intermodal units compared with volumes in March 2018, according to Association of American Railroads (AAR) data released April 5. In it’s latest release, issued Wednesday, AAR reported US rail traffic for the week ending April 6, 2019, at 510,192 carloads and…

The World Trade Organization Tuesday said the US violated international trade rules in the way it calculated tariffs on Canadian imports of softwood lumber in a key dispute ruling published on the WTO website. The decision also provided a boost to the US’s use of a controversial methodology used when calculating anti-dumping duties on Canadian…

Softwood lumber industry players continued wondering last week where the market was, as many prices softened further and the usual spring buying spree has yet not materialized. Sales volumes were OK, according to both sawmills and secondary suppliers, but — once again — no one was stocking inventory. This makes lumber producers wary; if some…