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Japan Housing Starts: November 2016
Housing starts in Japan for November were 85,051 units, a 6.7 per cent increase over 2015 and a 2.5 per cent drop from October, according the Japan Lumber Reports Thursday. Japan Housing Starts: November 2016 The accumulated total of starts for eleven months in 2016 was 888,831, a 6.8 per cent increase over the previous…
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US ITC Confirms “Material Injury”
An email last week from Canada’s federal department of Global Affairs provides the latest updates on this Canada-US softwood lumber dispute: “The US International Trade Commission (ITC) today confirmed that they have preliminarily determined that the US industry is materially injured by virtue of imports of Canadian softwood lumber into the United States. This is…
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US Construction Labour Shortage
Also at the NAHB Design and Construction Week, was a lot of conversation about a looming and serious shortage in skilled construction labour. During a three-hour seminar Wednesday morning, builders shared tips for finding and training newcomers and maintaining ties with their trades when labour is hard to find. US Home Builders and Skilled-Labor Shortage:…
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BC Dimension Cedar Producers Hike Prices in Anticipation of Softwood Lumber Duties
Dimension cedar mills in Lower Mainland, British Columbia, pushed their prices up another ten per cent, with plans for further hikes designed to mitigate forthcoming retroactive duties on their US-bound shipments. At least one large producer was “working hard” at getting Western red cedar exempted from the ongoing and embittered US-Canada Softwood Lumber Dispute. In…
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Western Wood Products Association: Lumber Track October 2016
Western US lumber production dipped 3.7 per cent in November 2016, from 1.17 BBF in October to 1.13 BBF, according to the Western Wood Products Association‘s monthly Lumber Track. Year-over-year, western production in November rose 9 per cent compared to November 2015. Through November of last year, western production totalled 12.82 BBF, an increase of…
