"From the Ridiculous to the Sublime": November 2024

Another planting season is essentially over. For me, the 2024 season reinforced three universal truths:

1. Nothing is certain in life except death and taxes.

2. Never get involved in a land war in Asia.

3. The tree price can never be high enough in Fort St John.

Looking ahead to 2025, here are some thoughts that I have on topics that may be of interest to planters.

Planting Volumes & Pricing

Across Canada, it seems that tree planting totals will continue to rise in 2025. The 2 Billion Tree program continues to grow, as expected, although the vast majority of national planting volume is still very much tied to harvesting activity.

British Columbia is a provincial exception to the growth curve. Volumes in BC are expected to drop next year, allegedly from 291 million to 233 million trees (a drop of 58 million trees or twenty percent). In theory, you’d think that this would lead to a supply and demand imbalance, which would then result in lower bid prices for next year’s contracts. In practice, we’re not seeing any consistent trend of that sort, at least not so far. Planting company owners and bidding personnel are dealing with significant cost pressures, and don’t have much flexibility to bid aggressively.

The big question that’s always on planters’ minds is what direction tree prices are moving in. My guess is that in 2025, they’ll remain almost exactly the same as in 2024. There are two opposing forces at play here ... supply reductions versus labour force reliability. It’s very unlikely that planters will see any broad price increases in BC, due to the expected drop in volume. At the same time, companies will be reluctant to drop planter prices, because planters might try to jump to other companies.

Companies are in a difficult position. They need to maintain planter prices, despite other rising costs and despite a potential slight drop in bid prices at the company level. Experienced planters are more valuable than new workers, and companies don't want planters to retire and move out of the industry to other careers. To be honest, if our industry can maintain planter prices at status quo going into 2025, we’ll be luckier than other forestry sectors that are dealing with massive job cuts. The planting workforce in BC will certainly be smaller in 2025, but it’s easy for our industry to downsize quickly since we have so much turnover every year. Several of the larger companies will probably consider downsizing by a full camp, which is usually pretty easy to do, and which strengthens the remaining camps.

Retiring Owners

In past years, I sometimes referred to the Big 14 planting companies in BC: Apex, Blue Collar, Brinkman, Celtic, Coast Range, Dynamic, Folklore, NATA, NGR, Rhino, Seneca, Spectrum, Summit, and Windfirm. While this group doesn’t include all of the largest companies (it omits companies such as Zanzibar), I tended to cluster this group together because they probably account for nearly 90% of the hiring of first-time inexperienced planters.

Until recently, it had been a long while since any of the biggest planting companies ceased operations, with the two most notable examples in the past 25 years probably being SilvaRam (2005) and Nechako (2010). However, Celtic shuttered their planting operations last year (although that company still does other forestry work at a smaller scale). At least two other mid-sized companies also ceased operations going into the 2024 season (Little Smokey & Nature's Treasures).

For 2025, I’m aware of two more companies from that big group which will not be planting anymore (although one of the two may rebuild as a smaller operation with a different name). In addition, another well-known smaller company is apparently done.

What does all of this recent turnover mean? Is it significant that six companies have shut down in the past 18 months? It feels to me that this is the market sending a signal that running a planting company just may not be worth it. On a positive note, the timing of this contraction matches well with the current decrease in volumes. Convenient. Keep in mind however, some other small companies have sprung up in the past two years, which will partially offset the reduction in the size of the industry.

Forestry Outlook in BC

It’s not just the planting industry that is contracting. There have been major upsets in mills throughout BC. Twenty years ago, there were slightly over a hundred operational mills throughout the province. The count is now down to just barely over half that number.

Canfor has been hit especially hard. After closing four mills in 2023, they recently announced the closures of their sawmills in Vanderhoof and Fort St. John. Canfor has now closed ten of their thirteen BC mills over the past several years.

Province-wide, mills are cutting a lot less. This is due to a slew of reasons, including fallout from a few decades of mountain pine beetle and other insect damage, several recent bad wildfire seasons, and also due to the remaining “good wood” being further and further from mills (which of course increases hauling and other costs). Lack of access to economic fibre is a big problem. It shouldn’t come as a surprise, in light of all these recent mill curtailments and the accompanying downtrend in harvesting, that planting volumes will also drop.

What will this do to the composition of the planting workforce? As long as tree prices don’t decrease, the industry should see a "normal" return rate of experienced planters in 2025. If this is the case, but we also consider the likelihood that the number of trees being planted will drop, we can deduce that there should be fewer seats available. This reduction will affect inexperienced applicants, not planters with previous planting experience.

I suspect that the number of “rookies” hired will drop significantly in 2025 compared to 2024. Companies will have the luxury of being more selective about whom they hire. International applicants will have a much harder time finding planting jobs, because it will be easier for companies to fill positions with promising Canadian applicants. Most companies prefer to hire Canadians, because they want employees who might still around for 3-5 seasons, and that’s not possible for a lot of the international applicants due to visa restrictions. If you're a rookie who is interested in becoming a planter in BC this year, the application process is going to be a lot more competitive than during the past few years.

Recent Elections

The BC election was not resolved quickly. Ultimately, a number of seats were decided by only a few hundred votes each. The NDP government won 47 seats, the bare minimum needed for a majority, although this wasn’t certain until several days after the election. The Green Party wound up with two seats. It initially appeared that the Greens would be able to decide who would form a coalition government, until the NDP got the last seat they needed during the recounts a week after election night. But that doesn’t mean that the NDP party can govern unchecked. If they lose a single MLA, either in a by-election or due to a defection, they will need to turn to the Green Party to maintain power. Any NDP MLA could switch parties to the Greens right now, and force a coalition government. That would give that particular MLA and the other two Green MLA's outsized influence. It will be a precarious political situation for the next few years. On a positive note for tree planters, the NDP alluded to supporting the planting of 300 million trees per year if elected. If any readers happen to know any of the NDP (or Green) MLA’s, reach out to them and remind them that you want their support for more planting in BC.

Looking south, the US elections were a bit of a surprise/shock to some. With Trump coming back into power soon, the most obvious likely result will be inflation due to the fiscal policies Republicans are expected to follow. Trump also mentioned "protecting Americans" with tariffs. If he moves ahead with that plan, there is a good chance that tariffs would increase on Canadian lumber. That would have a disproportionate negative impact on forestry in BC in particular. When BC’s forestry sector is unhealthy, the reforestation sector is obviously also affected. Between tariffs and inflation, we could eventually see less harvesting (which results in lower planting volumes), and higher prices on things like trucks and vehicle parts. Thankfully, it will probably be at least 18 months before any inflationary increases or spin-offs from lumber tariffs impact the planting industry, so that’s more of a worry for 2026 than for 2025.

Safety & First Aid

WorkSafe has introduced sweeping new first aid requirements for remote forestry workers in BC. These requirements came into effect on November 1^st. I’ll provide a link where you can learn about this in more detail, but the basic situation is that the industry will need more first aiders. Course names and content have also been modified. Existing first aid certificates will remain valid until their intended expiry dates, but planters renewing tickets will see some changes in their courses.

In addition to probably needing significantly more ticketed first aid attendants, there have been updates to required contents for first aid kits and dressing stations, and to hazard ratings for various worksites. You can find more info here:

https://www.replant.ca/docs/Nov_2024_First_Aid_Backgrounder.pdf

ETV’s are also under fire right now. There are approximately six different types of ETV’s in use at planting companies throughout the province. You can find everything from MTC’s to crummies to suburbans with fold-down seats, and the silver aluminum worker transport units that fit into the back of open-back pickups. Unfortunately, WorkSafe has basically identified potential problems with every single type of unit that is currently in use at planting companies. This is a situation which is evolving right now, but it could result in significant additional costs this winter/spring for many companies, large or small.

Total Physio

This company, based out of Houston BC, is well known to many planters. A large number of planting companies hire Total Physio to provide various services and resources to their planters. Total Physio’s library of taping resources is now up to 44 subjects, and growing. Great stuff.

Alternatives to ATV’s

There’s been a lot of talk about situations where road access has been reclaimed, making the use of ATV's very dangerous. What about using dirt bikes or electric fat bikes? A drawback is stability safety, and another drawback is that they can basically only permit a tree runner to move one box at a time. However, bikes can travel into some areas that a quad can’t access. I once had an entire crew that used mountain bikes to get to their blocks on one of my contracts. Think outside the box. I’m going to be using e-bikes to plant a reclaimed road project in Nova Scotia this week. Check out my Instagram account in a few days to see the fun: www.instagram.com/replant.ca

Bid Results

I normally track all public bid results for BC planting contracts on the Replant.ca forums. Some of you have noticed that I’m running late this year. There have been more than half a dozen jobs that have opened already, so mea culpa. However, I now measure my to-do list in years rather than pages, and I’ve been busy non-stop since the spring. I promise that I'll get around to summarizing and posting everything shortly.

To be fair, this year’s viewing and bidding season is running very late, perhaps close to a month later than normal. There will be a slew of contracts opening in the next three weeks (mid- to late November). As I said, I'll get around to analyzing and sharing everything soon.

Thanks for reading ...

- Scooter