Bob Simpson says he hopes to have some ideas and opportunities from the city’s Forest Think Tank in front of BC’s Forests Minister before the end of this legislative session.
He says the roughly 60 delegates who took part in the two-day session really rolled up their sleeves and went to work on four different topic areas….
“Each of those conversations give us very good examples of things we could do in our area, very good examples of areas needing more research and development, and then some really explicit examples of how Quesnel can take some steps towards changing our forest industry here and re-inventing it was a result of what’s happening on that timber land base.”
Simpson says on the manufacturing side, Quesnel’s economic development opportunities are pretty significant because of the diversity of already existing manufacturing in the area….
‘We’ll be working with West Fraser, C&C Wood Products, Tolko and others to try and figure out whether or not there are some opportunities for us to kind of capture a local market that would allow all of those industries to work together. Whether that’s getting into modular homes or whether that’s getting into some engineered wood products, we don’t know yet, but certainly the presenters who presented the future of the forest sector, whether that’s biodigesting or whether that’s engineered wood products, really indicated that Quesnel is well positioned to start moving into those new kinds of technologies, and new kinds of manufacturing opportunities.”
Simpson says they had very good representation from the Ministry of Forests, from UNBC from our research and teaching capacity and from all of the funding agencies that have Provincial Government money to put into forestry, into forest marketing and manufacturing and commercial pilots for developing manufacturing facilities.