I would not try to mash semantics with Ajaye it will get you nowhere, he is set to retire don’t you know or (now) in Ajaye speak. It will drive you bonkers mews and you will not receive a straight answer.
They don’t just take wood in raw form…hundreds of containers are exported monthly from BC filled with lumber, a lot of it beetle kill. Rupert handles only a portion of that and more than a dozen people work locally dealing with that export, plus all the truckers that haul it here and the the two or three mills that process it inland.
Even the raw logs keep scores of people working here, Terrace, Stewart, and in the bush.
Well this is true of course some folks are working with the export of logs and beetlekill wood (Hello Mr. PG), but one would imagine that if we were sending out value added product beyond just the raw materials that a good number more of our local residents could benefit from our local resources.
Actually, virtually all the lumber that is exported from here comes from Babine Forest Products (Burns Lake) and Canfor (Houston) so it’s still almost “local”. No, not really, but at least they’re pretty much the closest mills to us now.
Sure, we could open a sawmill to process wood closer to the port but then we’d be in competition with the largest sawmill in the world (Houston) and other mills struggling to compete (Babine, Decker Lake, Fraser Lake, etc). There’s not much logging that is going on that is that much closer to Rupert than to Houston (mostly up past Meziadin) so what would be the savings to entice anyone to open up shop here?
Personally, I think the flow from north to south needs to dry up; the traditional shipping of goods to Vancouver for export needs to re-directed to the west and container stuffing facilities built and used here. Logs, lumber, and aluminum is already being transloaded in ever-increasing quantities but there could be so much more of ALL those commodities. Fish needs to be processed here and then exported directly instead of being trucked to Vancouver plants for processing and eventual export. That would employ a HUGE number of people, more than any specialty mill ever would. Grain can easily be shipped out by the container load; several companies in Vancouver load twenty ft cans full time, year round, and there’s no reason why PRG or any other start-up could not do the same.
Some good points here uncle stumbly, my reason for mentioning the export of raw logs was that, not many years ago all the sawmills in the entire region were busy and all this lumber was being exported, the same volume of wood is all still going out but only a very small portion of it is now cut into lumber here, as most of our mills are now closed. All those logs are being processed into lumber, creating jobs over there, when we could / should be cutting it here creating many more jobs than exist in the industry now. If we stopped the sale of raw logs, they would have no choice but to purchase our lumber eventually. The entire forest products industry globally has been seriously manipulated ( supply and demand economics ) by the large multi-national players to drive prices down. But fuck them, they’re our trees dammit we should cutting the lumber not them, creating jobs here not there. Our governments have allowed this happen, how fucked up is that?
In reference to the use of containers for shipping grains, like you said, this can and is used for the shipment of smaller amounts of ‘specialty grains’ but is simply not as cost effective for the movement of larger volumes of dry bulk goods like coal, cereal and feed grains, oil seeds like canola, mineral ores, sulphur etc. as these are by necessity moved in much larger shipments of 30,000 to 100,000 metric tonnes or more, way too much volume going to a single destination to put in containers.
Your idea about more fish processing here and shipping in containers from here to asia is brilliant, lots of refridgeration containers available if need be also, Canfisco and UFAWU people should be all over this?
I think prefab homes and cabins would be something to export
we need to look outside the box china and India know would like to
make homes out of our fine lumber,also we have fish boat manufacturing
here and we have the aluminum in our back yard alcan its a billion dollar business
prince Rupert has alot to offer to Asia pacific we just need to act.
They don’t want our finished goods it would appear, they prefer just the raw materials so that they can employ their own population, as long as we continue to send the raw materials they’ll be more than happy to take them.
If we suggest that they take the finished or value added material they counter that they can make it somewhat cheaper there.
So unless we find a way to convince them that it’s in their best interests to accept a mix of both, we’ll just continue to feed their requirements without offering our own residents some of the rewards from our resources.
Ajaye… China, like most Asian countries, is a manufacturing and raw material producing country. Even CRC of China makes metro rolling stocks on behalf of Bombardier Transportation. China only imports things they can’t produce, and they will only buy them at a bargain.
Have you ever noticed the “Made in China” label on almost every stuff you buy from Canadian Tire?
And as for Aluminium: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aluminum_C … na_Limited
Please do some research. This is the 21st century; Ontarians makes Japanese cars these days.
We don’t need to convince ‘them’. We need to convince ‘us’. We enjoy the cheap stuff hence why we went to a place where people work for pennies.
To much materialism in society, something had to give.
Now lets start exporting some water to Nevada and we’ll be rolling in liquid gold.
Outside the box thinking is stupid and overused as a phrase.
Having lived and worked in these countries you mentioned I can tell you that North American ideas aren’t necessarily transferable. It’s arrogant and ethnocentric to impose your ideas upon others.
Let me give you an example of this. Pre-fab homes require land. Do you think the Chinese, Japanese, or even Europeans have access to lots on which to place these North American idealized living boxes?
I would see agricultural equipment rust on docks because some nut over here hadn’t realized that ‘farms’ in other parts of the world were garden-sized.
Get your thinking into some box. Being totally out of touch with how the rest of the world operates is displaying arrogance and ignorance.
grumble
Yes, you are right. I should listen to you.
One more reality check for you: the fishing industry is dead pretty much everywhere…it is not resting or pining for the fjords, but pushing-up-the-daisies-sings-with-the-choir-angelical-dead, because of declining fish stocks.
And you want to manufacture fishing boats? How about VHS tapes? Floppy disks? 
Adele
We need to move forward and act before we miss the boat.
What page from the Ajaye cliche-o-matic manual is that from?
3000 percent profit for the port folks and 72 percent capacity
for phase 1,this is lining up for phase 2 and we need to be ready
and start planning to expand our marketing business potential as in
fish export lumber and mining from the north.The city will Be looking
at 11 million dollars of revenue when phase 2 comes on stream and we
need to be ready because that’s the same size as Vancouver port we will
be like fort nelson theyboomed in 6 months it went crazy and the city was
not ready.
Fort Nelson has Oil and Natural gas everyone is crazy for that. Look at Edmonton and Fort Mac. they were not ready for the booms they have experienced in the last 10 years, how does one prepare for that. The money is not in the bank yet,do you spend on a hunch that there will be money. HAHA Rupert city council jab there.
The port of Prince Rupert is NOT the same size as Vancouver, not ever, not even with the phase two expansion. Vancouver has two downtown terminals, each with capacity larger than Fairview, plus Deltaport (which is equivalent to our phase two) PLUS Fraser Surrey Docks. All of that space is competing for the trans-Pacific freight.
Which, of course, is the great conundrum: if we don’t export them the raw materials to create the cheap products that are so wanted here in North America, our ports will sit empty and jobs will not be created. If we truly want to be a green, eco-conscious nation, we shouldn’t export our coal to fire their electrical generators. We shouldn’t cut down our trees, thereby reducing our carbon credits (ask the Haida!!) to be shipped overseas to be processed in a coal -powered factory to be shipped BACK to us…yet we have to try to employ SOMEbody, SOMEwhere up north to do SOMEthing…
@chaos - you are correct about the shipping costs of bulk grain but there are lots of smaller parcels sent regularly (peas, lentils, barley, malt, etc) because the containerized shipments are for premium products PLUS they can be delivered right to the customer’s door. Just like containers of lumber vs the Gearbulk ships that used to come into Watson to load a hold or two of Skeena lumber.
In the next 5 years prince Rupert is going to be a mega port its a given
return on ports is massive more then oil and gas its a multi billion dollar business.
WTF are you talking about Ajaye?.
Ajaye should work at city hall instead of the civic centre, they could use his command of financial forecasting!