State Of The Industry - Fall 2024 / Winter 2025

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

 

 

Links to Previous "State Of The Industry" Posts:

Early 2024:  https://jonathan-scooter-clark.blogspot.com/2024/01/state-of-industry-winter-2024.html

Fall 2022:  https://jonathan-scooter-clark.blogspot.com/2022/10/state-of-industry-fall-2022-tree.html

Fall 2021:  https://jonathan-scooter-clark.blogspot.com/2021/10/state-of-industry-fall-2021-bc-tree.html

Spring 2021:  https://jonathan-scooter-clark.blogspot.com/2021/04/state-of-industry-2021.html

Fall 2019:  https://jonathan-scooter-clark.blogspot.com/2019/09/state-of-industry-2019-bc-tree-planting.html

Fall 2018:  https://jonathan-scooter-clark.blogspot.com/2018/09/state-of-industry-british-columbia-tree.html

State of the Industry, Early 2024

Where do I begin?  The last twelve months have been tumultuous.  We’ve had record-breaking wildfire seasons in BC and Alberta, inflationary pressures, and a provincial government in BC that is eliminating the use of bundle wrappers on more than fifty million trees.  All of these changes were obvious in retrospect, yet they have surprised us nonetheless.

 

Wildfires

The 2023 wildfire season radically changed the landscape in both BC and Alberta.  We were shocked in 2017 and 2018 by record-breaking wildfires that burned slightly over a million hectares each year.  In the years since, the industry has been busy trying to help repair the damage.  However, in 2023, nearly FIVE million hectares burned in BC and Alberta combined.  That amount of ground, if replanted at 2000 stems/Ha, would represent more trees than BC has planted in known history.  It seems unlikely that tree planters will be able to replant even a tenth of the ground that burned last year (assuming that funding became available for that type of effort).

One thing that I noticed while looking at burned ground in many parts of both provinces during the Fall viewing season was that a lot of the Alberta fires, and fires in northeastern BC, appear to have burned cold (or burned quickly).  Unlike the characteristic hot burns that we saw in the Elephant Hills fire from 2017, or a myriad of other hot fires throughout southern BC, the Alberta and northeast BC fires often didn’t completely destroy the ecosystem.  The grass was often burned away, but I also saw many wildfire sites in plantations and forests where a lot of grass or light vegetation survived.  My casual observations were not sufficiently detailed or diverse to validate any sort of reliable dataset.  However, my gut feeling is that a lot of the burns in Alberta and northern BC may be more challenging to work through than the scorched earth of southern BC.  We’ll know in a few months.

 

Eliminating Single Use Plastics

Plastic flagging tape has been banned in some regions for a few years now, especially in areas where cattle grazing leases exist.  Thankfully, these eventual bans were phased in over a period of a few years.  Initially, we were expected to use shorter piece of flagger.  After a couple years, the Cariboo-Chilcotin district banned polyethylene flagger for all BCTS contracts.  The ban on plastic flagger continues to broaden.  Unfortunately, the industry still doesn’t have a viable alternative to plastic.  Biodegradable flagger is still far too expensive, and in some cases, even biodegradable flagger is banned.

Tree chalk has been a good alternative to plastic flagger in certain circumstances.  However, at least one provincial district is concerned about the damage that this product does to the seedlings, and has banned the use of chalk.  That prohibition may also spread in the future.

Moving beyond flagging tape, the next two targets for elimination will be bundle wrappers and tree box liners.  The BC government, after several years of inaction by the industry, has taken an unexpected lead on forcing change upon the industry.  Allegedly, all of the trees being planted on all 2024 BCTS and MOF jobs throughout the province will come in boxes with no bundle wrappers.  Chaos!  Well, I admit that this decision will be good for the environment.  But at what financial cost?  Loose trees will be problematic in terms of box splits and partials, and inventory management will become more challenging both for planters and management.  During the Fall viewing season, all cries of despair by contractors were met with impassioned disdain by the government.  No pricing flexibility was given for existing long-term contracts, so a lot of option-to-renew contracts were suddenly dropped rather than renewed.

Let’s temporarily ignore the hit to production and subsequent increase in planting costs relating to unbundled trees.  That’s a problem for company owners and not for myself, so let’s think about other impacts.  The success of any plantation depends partly upon stockhandling.  I still scratch my head wondering how anyone could have ever thought that this sudden tectonic shift in packaging and processing could be good for the trees.  Granted, we plant tens of millions of unbundled seedlings on the east coast each year, and most of them seem to survive.  But there’s one key difference that I don’t think anyone in government considered … east coast seedlings [in full-size trays] are grown as "pods," not as plug stock.  Pods are enclosed in a tight mesh membrane to keep the rooting medium and seedling roots protected.  Plugs in western Canada have no such protection.  Last year, many BCTS and MOF contracts included requirements such as “don’t unwrap more than a bundle at a time, because it’s bad for the trees.”  This year, in a complete reversal of the previous mentality, we’ll be given giant bags of loose seedlings.  I assume that we’ll see a huge increase in culled trees, and a parallel increase in plantation mortality.  It makes a planter wonder.  But I guess the government can pay us to plant all the blocks again in three years, when they get identified as insufficiently stocked and need to be fill planted.  Please forgive my cynicism.

To top things off, I saw a photo this Fall showing an unbundled box being packaged.  There were no bundle wrappers, because single-use plastics are bad.  Yet the nursery was still using a plastic bag as a box liner, instead of a paper liner.  Does this mean that single-use plastics aren’t always bad?  Was this hypocrisy, or a missed opportunity?

On a positive note, we'll no longer be chastised for unwrapping too many bundles (at least not on those specific contracts).  And that IS a good thing.  Restrictions on unbundled plugs are an anachronism of the past, based upon the mentality of the time when we planted exclusively bareroot seedlings and any exposure to "the air" could legitimately dry out the fine root hairs on the stock.  If a forester wants to promote good stock-handling, they should focus on the moisture content of the plugs, not upon whether or not the seedling bundles are unwrapped.

 

Finding a Labour Force

I heard a lot of reports in 2023 from companies who found it very difficult to recruit as many workers as they had hoped.  In some cases, this led to contracts being pushed out well beyond their intended completion dates.  In a few cases, companies had to walk away from contracts entirely.  Not a good situation.

Is there a solution?  Yes, better pay and better working conditions will help.  Listening to one’s employees will help.  But a shortage of workers is not a problem that will suddenly go away.  Hiring is a challenge nation-wide, and when clients make the job more challenging (such as with the elimination of bundle wrappers), it may come back to haunt them in the end.  What will happen if a significant number of planters get fed up in 2024 and start spreading the word that the planting industry should be avoided?  That would be a disaster in 2025, just when the industry really needs to ramp up in order to start replanting the 2023 wildfires.  If we’re going to have a sufficient labour force in 2025, then 2024 needs to be stellar.

 

Pricing

What can planters expect from 2024?  I don’t have a crystal ball, and I’m reluctant to speculate at this point.  However, I do know that bid prices in BC (to planting companies) actually dropped slightly from 2021 to 2023.  This was followed by a large increase for 2024 government projects (in BC).  Keep in mind that public (government) work in BC only represents roughly 20% of all planting within the province.  Private work accounts for the other 80%, and the big increases that we’ve seen in the public sector are not always matched equally by price increases in the private sector.  Things are moving in the right direction though.  Many private contracts are also going up in price.  This is good for planting companies, at least on the surface.  There is no way to calculate the exact increase on an industry-wide basis of both public and private work, but my guess is that contractors’ prices are up approximately 10-12% overall from 2023 to 2024.

A 10-12% increase sounds great for planting companies.  But is it?  Let's look at more than just the past twelve months.  We saw that bid prices decreased slightly from 2021 to 2023.  Therefore, if we zoom out and looking at the full period from 2021 to 2024, bid prices to planting companies have only increased by maybe 8-10% over a three-year span.  In light of significant increases in almost every category of operational expense over the past three years, this is not enough.  Planting contractors, on average, are in a more challenging financial environment than they were three years ago, despite the recent price increases.

Let’s focus on planter pricing instead of company pricing for a moment.  Planters generally seemed to see better prices in 2023 than in 2022 (which only seems fair in light of the inflation that we all experienced) but those increases basically came out of owner’s pockets, not from clients.  Will there be further planter price increases in 2024?  Probably yes.

It seems like it’s a tough time to be a planting company owner.  They’ve been hit with numerous cost increases in the past few years, bid prices were stagnant until this past Fall, it’s getting increasingly difficult to recruit a labour force, and clients have been trying to cut away at the bottom line.

I think we’re in a bit of a do-or-die situation for contractors in 2024.  Prices need to go up.  In many cases, bid prices have gone up recently, but that won’t necessarily translate into an equivalent increase in planter prices, as most companies are trying to dig themselves out of a hole from the past few years.  Regardless, I believe that planter prices need to increase in 2024 to account for inflation and, in some cases, to reflect the challenges that we’re going to face with unbundled trees.  Even if planter prices increase by another 5% this year (on top of the planter price increases that we’ve seen over the past couple years), it may be tough for some companies to find enough planters to complete the 2024 season.

If any foresters are reading this and don’t think that planting companies are struggling, let me remind you that some contracts did not get completed in 2023.  Nobody likes to talk about this, as nobody like to hear about a contract failure, but hundreds of thousands of trees were mulched or taken to landfills.  I’m aware of at least one company that has simply decided that 2023 was their last year for planting.  I’m also aware of two other major companies that are scaling back significantly.  Are these companies the so-called canaries in the coal mine?

 

Bears, and Safety in General

Our industry is small enough that when there’s a major safety incident, everyone sits up and takes notice.  Unfortunately, one company had such an incident in early July, when a planter was attacked by a bear while planting near Tumbler Ridge.  Thankfully, she survived.

The previous year, the helicopter company that I was using had one of their staff attacked by a bear at a staging site close to where I was working.  That person was doing logistical support work for another planting company at the time.  Sadly, she didn’t survive.

We didn’t sign up for planting with the expectation of getting hurt or becoming a fatality.  We like to spend our summers thinking about what we’re going to do with our money in the Fall and winter.  We deserve to enjoy our earnings after the season is safely over.

There are a lot of safety topics that some planters see as a remote threat – like having a tree fall on you, getting hit by lightning, or being attacked by a bear.  Sure, it’s possible, but it’s not likely to happen to you, right?  Yet I’ve personally known planters who have been victims in all three of those types of situations.  Remember, if anything can go wrong while planting trees, it eventually will.  Don’t put aside common sense thinking that something is unlikely to happen to you.  It seems that the planters in all of these situations did absolutely nothing “wrong” to bring about the incidents that they were involved in, but playing by the rules doesn’t mean that external events can’t work against you.

I’ve sometimes said, “Maybe you should slow down a bit,” to a driver on a gravel road.  And sometimes they respond, “But I’m not even going the speed limit, and I’m in control.”  Sure you are, until nature throws a curve ball at you and a deer jumps out in front of the truck, or until you hit some washboard and the truck goes sideways.  Expect the unexpected, no matter what you’re doing.  The hardest part of my job as a supervisor is thinking about all the things that can wrong every day, and how easy it is for someone to get hurt.

It may be beneficial for more crews to have bear spray available at the truck in protected Pelican cases, or in a Kozy Tote.  A lot of planters don't have an interest in back-bagging a canister of bear spray, and there are real risks based on accidental discharge, but a protected canister that is stored at the truck with the first aid gear may come in handy.  Expect WorkSafeBC to be asking more companies what their bear deterrent plans are in 2024.

Let’s move on to some more cheerful topics.

 

Starlink Internet and … Cell Phones?

I’m certainly not a Musk fanboy, but I’m impressed with Starlink.  I’ve used their systems for a couple years now, and while they’re still not ideal in a camp situation with several dozen simultaneous users, they’re a huge step up from previous options such as Xplornet.

Within two years, we may see something even more useful.  Starlink is working on satellite-to-cell technology which would allow cell users in any part of the globe to remain connected for SMS, voice, and data, even when traditional cell service is not available.  The drawback is that Rogers is the first company they’ve partnered with in Canada.  I say that’s a drawback because Rogers currently seems to be one of the least reliable networks in rural British Columbia.  Or maybe that means that Rogers will be a great fit.  Either way, the good thing is that once the system is operational, we allegedly won’t need to trade in our phones for a special Starlink phone.  The system is supposed to work with all existing 4G and 5G phones.

Let’s hope that this technology doesn’t fail like a few of Musk’s other projects.  I’ve been following this story for about half a year, and the first six of Starlink’s direct-to-cell satellites were launched just 48 hours ago, which will allow initial testing of wide-scale operational viability.  Widespread satellite connectivity for cells phones would be a huge positive development for the planting industry, if they pull it off.

 

“The Cache”

There’s a new website available for the planting industry:   www.cachelife.ca

It’s still in the development phase, but the goal is to make it a very rich resource for planters and other industry stakeholders.  If you want to check it out, I’d recommend starting with the “Culture” or “In The Field” sections under the Explore tab.

 

Kerri Dunsmore

Kerri is an Athletic Therapist.  She was a planter for several years, and she’s long been a frequent and welcome presence on planting-related social media.

Kerri is based in Williams Lake, but her outreach extends well beyond that thanks to some of the pre-season training programs that she has put together for planters.

Kerri deserves a shout out, so here’s a link to her website:  www.kdathletictherapy.ca

If you’re working anywhere near Williams Lake and have any issues, reach out to her.

 

Future Changes to the Industry

We’ve heard some rumours about upcoming changes to the industry.  There is going to be a complete overhaul of how we classify workplaces and assign first aid.  This all comes into effect in November of this year, so it won't affect the upcoming planting season.  However, it will matter for next year.

Hi Vis – High vis clothing may eventually be required for all planters working in British Columbia.

ETV’s – Current rules (simplified) dictate that if there are 16 or more persons working on a planting site, an ETV is required.  That threshold will be reduced such that crews of 10 persons will be required to have an ETV.  This requirement would also be triggered by two six-pack crews working near each other.  Related to this, ERP's will need to be improved.  The industry may have to reconfigure fleets quite radically for 2025, and this will be a very expensive situation (a single new crew cab pickup with ETV capabilities can cost more than $160,000). 

OFA3’s – Not only may the number of ETV’s eventually need to be increased, we may also need more crew members trained with the full OFA level 3 first aid certification.  To be honest, this is a fabulous course, and having more OFA3’s available would be good for the industry.  For the November 2024 changes, it looks more likely that there will need to be more Intermediate first aiders in our workplaces (formerly OFA2), and the duration of the Intermediate course is also being shortened.

Injury Management - There will be changes in how injury management is conducted (Bill 41), with greater responsibilities placed on both workers and employers to cooperate in helping people recover from injuries.  This will likely increase the workload of OHS coordinators, although it also has the potential to help save money on claims.

If there are any further developments on any of these issues, we can rest assured that Jordan Tesluk, our official industry Safety Advocate, will share the information widely.

 

Artificial Intelligence

AI is an odd topic for a tree planting article.  Or is it?

Many people will think I’m a bit crazy here, but I believe that AI presents an opportunity for significant improvements to the planting industry.  I’m not talking about AI robots designed to plant trees, or AI-powered drone planting (yet), or anything futuristic and hi-tech like that.  I’m talking about more mundane administrative stuff.

I’ve been paying very close attention to this field for almost a year now, and the change of pace is stunning.  The AI field has evolved more in the past six months alone than the planting industry has evolved in forty years, and that’s saying something.  Artificial Intelligence offers a lot of risks, and it offers incredible opportunities.

So far, I’ve thought of about a dozen areas where AI’s can assist management at planting companies.  To generalize, small companies will probably see the most benefits from being able to leverage knowledge that they don’t possess in-house.  Large companies will probably see benefits from extremely powerful data analysis.

Don’t worry, AI won’t take away our jobs.  But AI’s, LLM’s (large language models), and ML (machine learning) will have the potential to improve a lot of things that we take for granted.  We’re going to see improvements in everything from weather forecasting to delivery logistics to mapping.  Or maybe we won’t even notice.

 

Conclusions

Ok, that’s enough for now.  Get some rest.  It’s already 2024.  The planting season will be here before you know it …

 

 

Links to Previous "State Of The Industry" Posts:

Fall 2022:  https://jonathan-scooter-clark.blogspot.com/2022/10/state-of-industry-fall-2022-tree.html

Fall 2021:  https://jonathan-scooter-clark.blogspot.com/2021/10/state-of-industry-fall-2021-bc-tree.html

Spring 2021:  https://jonathan-scooter-clark.blogspot.com/2021/04/state-of-industry-2021.html

Fall 2019:  https://jonathan-scooter-clark.blogspot.com/2019/09/state-of-industry-2019-bc-tree-planting.html

Fall 2018:  https://jonathan-scooter-clark.blogspot.com/2018/09/state-of-industry-british-columbia-tree.html

 

 

 

 

State of the Industry, Fall 2021 (BC Tree Planting)

Here we go again.  Viewing season has started in western Canada, with companies looking at contracts for 2022, and submitting bids.  What better time than now to comment on the state of the Canadian reforestation industry?

There are half a dozen main issues that I should comment upon:  Safety, inflation, industry volumes for 2022, tree prices, Covid, forest fires, and the 2021 Heat Wave.

 

Health & Safety

I could write an entire essay just about health & safety, but in the interests of keeping things short, I’ll summarize.  And I’ll address Covid separately.

Fatigue continues to be a problem for the industry.  This is especially apparent at the management level.  While a planter’s day is usually done at dinner, this is rarely the case for management at any level.  Company owners and upper-level managers need to continue trying to avoid letting camp and crew leaders work themselves to exhaustion.

Bear safety has been a regular tailgate topic for many years, but the issue really came into the spotlight at the end of July when a support staff working with a helicopter crew near Whitecourt was killed by a black bear who dragged her away from the staging area during planting operations.  Even though some types of accidents are incredibly rare (such as those relating to danger trees, wildlife attacks, and lightning), the risks cannot be ignored.

New OH&S reg are about to be released in British Columbia.  This may increase the number of OFA3’s that are required in the workplace.  However, this hasn’t been finalized.  If more OFA3's are required, this course will become an increasingly valuable addition to one's resume.

It appears that many companies are putting an increased emphasis on acknowledging mental health issues in the workplace.  Psychological first aid training courses are becoming more common, as is access to professional counselling.  I hope that such resources and initiatives continue to become more common.

 

Inflation

If you hadn’t paid attention, inflation is running hot these days.  You’re probably noticing this at the gas pumps if you’re a driver.  I was seeing prices of over $1.60 per liter in southern BC this week.  Imagine what prices will be next summer, considering that oil prices are expected to continue to rise.  Compare the price per liter with what fuel cost in the 2020 planting season, and you’ll see that fuel costs are going to have jumped by as much as 50% to 80% in a two-year period (admittedly, the prices in 2020 were a bit low due to Covid).  We certainly may see gasoline and diesel at $2/liter or more by the time next year’s planting season rolls around.  The global energy crisis is just starting to be felt in Canada.

Look at food costs.  The global food price indices are up around 30% year-over-year right now, based upon basic food commodity pricing.  But what does that translate to at the grocery store?  Well, various sources are suggesting that grocery prices in Canada are up by about 4-7% overall in 2021, compared to 2020.  And that upward trend is expected to continue.

Supply chain issues are also becoming more of a problem by the month, thanks to dozens of industries either underestimating or overestimating global consumption patterns when Covid was ramping up in 2020.  Right now, it’s almost impossible to buy new ATV’s, side-by-sides, or full-sized pickups.  I bought a new Jeep Wrangler (base model) in 2017 for $26k.  It now has forty thousand kilometers on it, and I could currently sell it for $35k.  One major truck rental agency recently sold all of it’s 2019 trucks.  Why?  Because after renting them in 2019, 2020, and 2021, they were able to sell them for fifteen percent more than they paid for them originally.  A lot of truck parts are also becoming very hard to find, including basics like air filters.  If a truck develops mechanical problems in 2022, it might be stuck at a repair shop for the remainder of the season.  Will planting companies have spare trucks to keep their fleets running?  Anything short of a 350 doesn’t have enough power to carry anything more than crew and a quad.  This is a flashback to the 90’s, but some planters may end up losing days of work due to vehicle downtime.  Vehicle costs (above and beyond fuel costs) are going to rise dramatically in 2022.

Real estate prices are up (not that many planters can afford to buy houses).  Tuition prices are up.  Retail prices are up.  If you’re an Amazon customer, go into your past orders and look at something that you bought 12-24 months ago, and check the current selling price.  Three-quarters of the things that I bought on Amazon in 2019 and 2020 have increased in price by 20-30%.

Wages need to rise to follow inflation.  Will planting companies bid higher this fall?  It’s hard to say.  Many companies that I’ve spoken to hope to factor 5% price increases into bids.  But will they have the resolve to do that?  I guess we’ll know in two months.

 

Industry Volumes for 2022

The Western Forestry Contractors’ Association recently held on online Market Summit.  I was flying at the time, and didn’t have the opportunity to watch the presentations in real time.  However, some of the presentations are online now.  Visit this page to find them:

   https://wfca.ca/2021/10/wfca-rumour-mill-roundupdate-volume-21-issue-12/

British Columbia is allegedly going to have a slight drop in overall planting numbers for 2022, with the total number of trees decreasing by about twenty million seedlings.  This isn’t entirely a bad thing.  It will let the industry catch its breath compared to two back-to-back record years in 2019 and 2020 (which were slightly more than 300 million trees each year).

A decrease of twenty million trees seems like a lot.  However, that’s only a decrease of about 7% from the levels of the past two years.  And considering that there were a number of significant contract extensions this year, and some non-completions, it’s obvious that the industry is still running very much near capacity.  On top of this, the numbers above don’t reflect additional planting that is coming on-stream from other non-traditional sources, such as oil&gas and environmental projects.

I don't want to appear to contradict the WFCA's analysis of future volumes, but they are obliged to rely on solid verifiable data, and that's a weakness.  Their analysis shows a slow decline in volumes for the next several years.  This is understandable, considering the data that they have to work with.  However, I think they're currently forced to neglect two major factors in their analysis:  2021 Wildfires, and the 2021 Heat Wave.  More on these subjects below.

I expect the industry drop in volume for 2022 to be temporary.  Demand will be pushing the limits again in 2023.

Tree Prices

What can planters expect for tree prices in 2022?  Well, in theory, we’d like to see slight increases, to counter the effects of general price inflation.  Unfortunately though, I think we’ll see that pricing will remain stagnant.  I’d like to think otherwise, but I’m being realistic here.

Most of the industry participants (planting company owners and upper management) understand the need to increase bid prices due to inflation.  Most participants know that Covid costs are not included in this year’s numbers, and unlike last year, needed to be added on top of bid prices.  Most participants are involved in broad discussions (such as the recent WFCA Market Summit), and know that they as a group are responsible for the fiscal health of the entire planting industry.

In 2021, the average bid price on all of the “easy” northern Interior government contracts last year was 48.73 cents per tree.  But there was also an automatic 8.6% added onto these [camp-based] contracts for Covid costs, so the true bid price was around 52.92 cents per tree.  If 5% inflation (and a component for Covid) is added this year, then one would hope that the winning bids for northern Interior work average out to around 55.4 cents.  If bids are lower than this, the bottom line at the planting companies will be what suffers the most.  The ball is in the contractors' court here.  If a company tries to low-ball a few bids then drop planter prices to maintain profitability, they will lose planters to competitors.  The labour market is very tight these days.

 

Covid

I can say with complete certainty that we’re all getting pretty sick of hearing about Covid by now.  And yet, people are still dying, so we can’t ignore it.  In the coming months, company owners will have to make tough decisions about operating parameters for 2022.  For the past two seasons, the camp-based companies made the decision to keep planters in camp on days off, but also to provide meals and laundry services on those days.  Will companies continue to absorb those costs if bid prices don’t support the cost?  Or will planters be free to go to town again?  And if that’s the case, how many cases of Covid will come back to the camps with them?  At least three major companies started to let their planters travel into the local communities in July of this year, and subsequently had to deal with Covid cases among their crews (this was in addition to the two other companies that had Covid outbreaks in the spring).  We want our freedom, but we also want safety.  Where is the balance?

Vaccinations will also be a hot topic in the coming months.  Company owners have also been discussing this issue.  My belief is that a lot of companies will require all employees to be double-vaccinated in 2022 as a condition of employment.  The vast majority of planters are already vaccinated anyway, so this mandate wouldn’t bother most people in that subset of the workforce.  Many planters have said that they’d prefer for their workforces to be 100% vaccinated, because that will presumably grant greater freedoms.

Planters who are not and do not wish to be vaccinated will be vocal in their frustration about these policies.  Some planting companies may specifically decide against vaccination policies, in hopes of capturing a larger group of [non-vaccinated] experienced planters who are looking for new homes.  It will be interesting to see what happens.  Considering that the majority of current cases are among unvaccinated people, will any vaccinated planter want to work at a company that doesn’t require vaccinations?  In theory, the risk of Covid outbreaks will be significantly higher at those companies.

 

Forest Fires

The wildfire season is essentially over.  After two record-breaking fire years in 2017 and 2018, British Columbia saw two very quiet years in 2019 and 2020.  But 2021 was another bad year.  By September 30^th, approximately 868,000 hectares had burned throughout the province, which is more than twenty times the wildfire land base of the previous two years put together (2019 and 2020 combined only saw 36,000 Ha burned).

The past few years have seen improvements for tree planters in comparison to historical earnings from the previous decade.  This was solely due to the 2017/2018 wildfire activity.  There was strong demand for planters, as the forest industry and the province tried to fix some of the damage from the massive wildfires of those two years.  That work will continue in 2022 and beyond.

Many people assume that planting of areas burned by wildfires can happen within days or weeks.  That’s not the case.  Post-fire reforestation is very complicated, with complex timelines.  For the next several months, foresters are going to be assessing the damage in their regions.  Long-term planning starts to happen.  Budget decisions need to happen, to figure out where to find money to restore burned forests.  A lot of that funding originates from government, which typically doesn’t move as fast as industry.  However, there is one other significant delay – procurement of seedlings.  Canada’s nurseries are operating near capacity.  Even when nurseries have space to grow trees, seed must be allocated, and then the seedlings need to be grown.  All of this takes a lot of time.  Although a bit of 2021’s burned ground will undoubtedly be planted in 2022, most of the planting really won’t start in earnest until the spring of 2023.  I expect to see record-breaking volumes in 2023, if the nurseries can supply enough seedlings.

 

Heat Wave

This is a story that hasn't been discussed widely as of late, perhaps because it's such a sad story.  The heat wave appears to have caused widespread seedling mortality.  Actually, "widespread mortality" is a strong understatement.  The western Canadian heat wave in late June and early July killed an incredible number of seedlings throughout BC and Alberta.  I've visited several plantations this week where not a single [2021] seedling survived, not even the trees hidden in the shade.  There was nothing wrong with the stock or with the planting quality.  The heat (and several weeks without appreciable moisture in the soil) just toasted them.  I'll post a photo at the bottom of this essay to show an example of a fir seedling that was perfectly planted behind a large obstacle (northeast side), and perfectly protected from the hot southwest afternoon sun.  However, it didn't survive.  Nor did any of the hundreds of thousands of other trees (multiple species) on the same block.

I'm hearing similar reports from several parts of BC and even into northern Alberta.  I've never seen anything like this.  It's incredibly disheartening.  I don't think the industry has ever experienced anything like this.  I hope I'm overestimating, but it may be that more than 25% of the trees planted this year have experienced cataclysmic failure.  With over 400 million seedlings planted in Western Canada this year, more than a hundred million may have died in the heat wave.  It's going to take years for some regions to recover from this.  And again, depending on funding, this is one more reason why the industry will need to run at full speed in 2023 and beyond.

 

Conclusions

After two record-setting years, it probably wouldn’t be such a bad thing to have a “normal” busy year.  Fatigue continues to be an issue for the industry (especially on the management side), and a lot of owners and camp supervisors would be happy to have a less challenging season in 2022.  Despite this, the number of trees to be planted is still very high by historical standards.  Let’s hope that everyone gets a lot of rest this winter.

I'll update this post in February 2022, to reflect upon the results of the fall 2021 bidding season.

- Scooter

www.replant-environmental.ca

Links to Previous "State Of The Industry" Posts:

Spring 2021:  https://jonathan-scooter-clark.blogspot.com/2021/04/state-of-industry-2021.html

Fall 2019:  https://jonathan-scooter-clark.blogspot.com/2019/09/state-of-industry-2019-bc-tree-planting.html

Fall 2018:  https://jonathan-scooter-clark.blogspot.com/2018/09/state-of-industry-british-columbia-tree.html