Column: Forestry stands tall

While the past year has seen rising fuel prices, the recession and earthquakes rocking the overall New Zealand economy, for those lucky enough to be in the forestry sector business continues to be strong and counter-cyclical.
Forest products exports are racing ahead, great news for forest owners, managers, contractors and transport companies.
The boom in commodity prices has touched our industry in terms of prices, to a small degree, but it has been nothing like the price rises in dairy exports. Don't get me wrong - wood prices from New Zealand are strong and firm, but the real success is in great export volumes at good prices.
Demand from China has been steadily growing for the past 12 to 18 months and the current boom in log exports is now one of the longer ones we have had.
Sawmills have been less fortunate, with the property cycle slowing considerably. But the recent earthquakes should bring wood demand for housing, and, possibly, for commercial building, for quite a sustained period.
Past wood export booms have tended to be short, followed by a nasty "bust" cycle. This year, we can't see that decline happening. The effects of recent disasters look likely to bolster demand for all things wood for the foreseeable future.
The wave of demand for wood markets in China has now spread to log exports from the west coast of the United States. Western Canadian lumber exporters have also welcomed the relief as their traditional US housing timber buyers have yet to emerge from the Fanny Mae/Freddy Mac sub-prime crisis.
So Canadians, especially British Columbian lumber producers, have jumped on the market wagon. Generally the US/Canada/New Zealand market segments are all quite complementary.
On top of China, there is enthusiasm - if not solid market demand - for growth in wood markets in India. However, China continues to be the hot market and is showing no intention of slowing demand just now. The world watches and waits, while pouring wood, iron ore and other raw materials into the Chinese melting pot, which now seems to be fuelled as much by internal demand as by products for export.
Let's hope any subsidence of Chinese demand coincides with growth in demand from Canterbury and Japan. In the meantime, New Zealand's foresters can take a bow. The wood supply is ideally suited to the market growth now taking place.
It is, therefore, with some optimism that the World Cup of Wood is coming to Rotorua  in the first week of September and the week before that other cup thing.
The four-yearly industry show is titled the PF Olsen Forest Industries Expo 2011, recognising the support of one of New Zealand's largest independent forest management companies, which has thrown its weight behind this national event.
Rotorua has traditionally hosted this large industry expo at the racecourse.
But now, with the Energy Events Centre, the entire show can be hosted at the new facility. It includes indoor and outdoor exhibits of world-leading technology and equipment for everything from taking seedlings to marketable forest products.
Mark your diary for September 5-7, when the forestry folks converge on Rotorua.
- John Stulen is chief executive of the Forestry Industry Contractors' Association