NW Natural Resource Note,
NW lumber firms are benefiting from the Japan Tsunami aftermath. The Vancouver business, Columbia Vista Corp., exports 75% of its lumber to Japan and has recently hired two dozen new workers. A Japanese lumber company, Miyoshi, was destroyed after the Tsunami and now relies on $120,000 a month orders from Columbia Vista.
Another NW firm to benefit is Vanport International. Here is their feature in The Oregonian:
“Fewer than a dozen Northwest companies have mastered the art of milling lumber to Japan’s exacting metric specifications. But for those that have, the need to repair or replace more than 300,000 houses hit by the tsunami last year creates opportunity. None stands out more than Oregon’s Vanport International Inc. The company, guided by its soft-spoken chairman, German native Adolf Hertrich, has cultivated extraordinary ties in a nation that has often frustrated conventional U.S. exporters. These links helped the Boring-based company survive more than one near-fatal predicament. As competing mills tanked, Vanport morphed to build on its Japan business and forge new cross-cultural ties, most recently rescuing the mill at the Warm Springs Indian Reservation outside Madras. “
read more
Disclaimer: Articles featured on Oregon Report are the creation, responsibility and opinion of the authoring individual or organization which is featured at the top of every article.