Virginia port ready to send logs to China as ban ends
In mid-June a shipping company will send a container of logs from a Port of Virginia terminal to China, ending a 14-month-long ban, reported The Daily Press (MCT).
The Chinese put the ban in place for hardwood and softwood logs from Virginia and South Carolina in April 2011 after finding a worm that infects pine trees in a number of American log shipments.
China, the world's largest importer of logs, set up a six-month pilot programme for the two states that will allow for log shipments to resume but under a set of restrictions.
Curtis Struyk, president of Carolina Ocean Lines and a co-founder of the US Lumber Shippers Association, said he thinks his company would be able to export "about a quarter" of the number of containers through the Port of Virginia that it did before the ban.
Struyk estimated that he had shipped at least 200 containers of logs a week to China using Virginia ports.
A list of the requirements under the programme, obtained by the Daily Press, target the pine wood nematode, a worm that causes pine wilt.
The programme includes beef-up of fumigation and inspection procedures, and limits Virginia and South Carolina log exports to ports in two cities, Shanghai and Jiangsu.
"There were a lot of ports in China left off," said Struyk, "but luckily Shanghai's one of the ports."
Of the extra inspection and fumigation processes, he said, "It'll be a little more cumbersome, but, hey, it's a step in the right direction."
In a news release, Virginia Port Authority executive director Jerry Bridges predicted an immediate benefit for the state's timber industry.
"Normally the harvesting (of logs) slows in the summer because of the heat, but we're having some customers tell us they are going to work through the summer to help make up for lost time," Bridges said.
The state's log exports were down significantly in 2011 during the ban. The total value of exports that year were US$57 million, down from $67 million the prior year.
