US home construction improved a slight +1.5% in October, but ground breaking for single-family houses fell. The US Commerce Department said Tuesday US housing starts rose to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 1.23 million, up from 1.21 million in September. The gains came entirely from apartments. Starts for single-family houses slipped -1.8% last month.…

The United Steel Workers (USW) Bargaining Committee, representing the British Columbia USW Locals 1-405 (Cranbrook), 1-417 (Kamloops), 1-423 (Kelowna) and 1-2017 (Prince George), which includes 2,600 members in the south region and 2,000 members in the north region, booked out provincial mediator Dave Schaub late Friday night after talks broke down with the Interior Forest…

The manufacture and sale of North America softwood lumber and panel raced headlong into the US Thanksgiving long weekend after two years of a very tumultuous market. Madison’s own expectations were for the recent annual North American Wholesale Lumbermen’s Association (NAWLA) meeting in Chicago, IL, to be “off-the-hook” as the kids say. While extremely well…

Fast on the news last week that the respective bargaining committees, for workers and employers, were making progress and a deal seemed imminent, this weekend came word of possible more continued rotating strikes for British Columbia sawmills. According to the United Steelworkers, contract talks have broken down with the Interior Forest Labour Relations Association (IFLRA),…

West Fraser in Quesnel, BC, will be eliminating a shift at its sawmill, said MyPrinceGeorgeNow Wednesday. The company says it will permanently curtail approximately 300 million board feet of combined production at its Fraser Lake, BC, and Quesnel sawmills. A total of 75 employees will be impacted in Quesnel, over 1Q and 2Q 2019, although…

CoreLogic® Thursday released the CoreLogic Home Price Index (HPI™) and HPI Forecast™ for September 2018, which shows US home prices rose both year over year and month over month. Home prices increased nationally by 5.6 percent year over year from September 2017. On a month-over-month basis, prices increased by 0.4 per cent in September 2018.…

The latest data, released by Statistics Canada Thursday, shows lumber production in Canada fell -1.5 per cent in January to August 2018 compared to one year earlier, with sawmills producing 50,389 thousand cubic metres of lumber, compared to 51,125 thousand cubic metres for the first eight months of 2017. In separate data released by Statistics Canada also…

A topsy-turvey North American softwood lumber market righted itself somewhat last week even as large numbers of lumber traders descended on Chicago, IL, for the annual North American Wholesale Lumbermen’s Association (NAWLA) convention. Scuttlebutt from that important event is that the Canadians were most interested in exports to Asia, especially China. Prices on most construction…

North America softwood lumber and panel current and recent historical prices trend: 2-month bar charts:  

The latest quarterly report Madison’s has been producing this year for the federal government of Canada has found some interesting new developments in the market dynamics of producing and selling softwood lumber products. It is encouraging that Madison’s findings are this very week corroborated by analysts at Export Development Canada: Export economist predicts China to…

US #softwood #lumber production reversed it’s decrease last month, climbing a spectacular +9.0 per cent in August compared to the month prior and continued improvements over the previous year by growing another +2.0 per cent from August 2017, according to statistics from the Western Wood Products Association’s Lumber Track. US lumber production totaled 2,908 million…

The North America softwood lumber market ended October 2018 in a complete reversal to the rest of the year, and indeed most of 2017. Inventories were plump, customers were silent, producers were just starting to announce seasonal downtime, and secondary suppliers had an abundance of wood on hand. At sawmills, log supply was ample. Sales…

On Wednesday, October 24, all 14 proposals from the Ad Hoc Committee on Tall Wood Buildings were approved by large margins at the International Code Council (ICC) public comment hearings in Richmond, VA. The Softwood Lumber Board (SLB) commends the American Wood Council (AWC) and its effort in this specially funded initiative by the SLB,…

Employees represented by United Steelworkers 1-2017 joined those negotiating in the north with employer group CONIFER last week, by walking off the job Friday morning in Williams Lake, BC, at Tolko’s Soda Creek Division and West Fraser’s Planer, said My Prince George Now. For background info please read: Northern British Columbia Sawmill Workers on Strike:…

A very good indicator of current construction activity, thus future lumber prices, is US construction spending. New data out this week from the US Commerce Department shows construction spending flat in September 2018 after a 0.8 per cent rise in August, said the New York Times Thursday. Spending on US construction projects was essentially unchanged in…