B.C.’s Forests ministry is expanding a program that allows value-added manufacturers to access BC Timber Sales logs to include specialty “custom cutters” who supply unique wood products to buyers around the world.
These manufacturers supply wood for everything from specialty windows and doors to Japanese temples. But unlike other value-added manufacturers that use BC Timber Sales logs, these businesses don’t have their own mills.
There are about 40 custom cutter companies in B.C., directly employing roughly 250 people.
“These companies contribute heavily to our forest economy,” Forests Minister Ravi Parmar said in a Monday announcement in Vancouver. “They make innovative value-added wood products and are an important part of the fourth sector value chain.”
The owner of one of these companies appeared alongside Parmar to explain.
“The reason we don’t own a sawmill is when you’re custom cutting, you’re customer-specific,” said Tom Sundher, president of the Surrey-based Sundher Group. “So, to do that, we have to choose different mills that have different kinds of equipment to be able to process their wood.”
B.C.’s value-added manufacturing program was created to aid small- and medium-sized companies that take forestry products and turn them into something more than dimensional lumber, and specifically restricted to manufacturers with no forest tenure, but who owned or leased a processing facility.
The government established the program in 2023 by setting aside 10 per cent of BC Timber Sales tenure for small and medium-sized value-added manufacturers, increasing the allotment to 20 per cent in 2025.
Parmar is increasingly focused on expanding value-added manufacturing in response to U.S. duties and tariffs, which have hit the dimensional lumber sector hard.
“To build a future for forestry, B.C. will no longer just be simply a supplier of commodity dimensional lumber for Americans,” he said.