48 / 92
4 8
BUILDING CONNECTION
SUMMER 2016
WESTERN RED CEDAR: WHAT
ABOUT SUPPLY?
I
n the 2016 winter edition I concluded that western red
cedar (WRC) would be a good substitute for Californian
redwood given the price and availability on the Australian
timber market. While WRC is still my preferred species, the
selection on price and availability might not be that close to
the point.
Following the article I had a former associate contact
me, saying he believed WRC was not faring much better in
the market these days with prices rising and availability
declining and although that seems to be the case, I still don’t
think redwood is an option.
With that in mind I began to wonder, ‘what is the situation
with WRC and the likely supply position into the future?’
WRC has been one of those iconic timber species very
widely used in Australia for linings, cladding, handrails and
balustrades, various shutter and blind systems, screening,
door and window joinery, louvre blades... and the list goes on.
Durability, easy of drying, stability, ease to work and
good gluing characteristics make it an excellent timber for
many applications and with such a long term history in our
industry, it would seem hard to replace.
My understanding, from the advice I was given, is that
WRC is becoming harder to source and the price had
skyrocketed in the last few years. Anecdotally I was told
that wild fires in North America were causing the problems
and as these were brought under control and logging areas
returned to normal, availability and price would come back
to more predictable and manageable levels.
I had certainly seen and read about the wildfires in North
America but I hadn’t pieced the two together and while I knew
the west coast of USA, particularly the states of California,
Oregon and Idaho had experienced some massive fires, I
didn’t think of them having any impact on the supply of WRC.
WRC is one of a number of softwood species in the ‘Pacific
Northwest’ of North America referred to as a cedar, the
others being California incense-cedar and Port Orford-
cedar. Both are historically so called because they look
similar to the true ‘Mediterranean’ cedars. Originally to
identify them as not being true cedars, the words in their
name were often officially written as hyphenated (as noted
before) or conjoined in the case of WRC, although in common
usage this linking of the names is generally overlooked.
The distribution range of WRC is reasonably broad,
starting in coastal northern California extending north
through Oregon (basically the coastal mountain areas),
through Washington, extensively into British Columbia,
Canada, and into the very southern reaches of Alaska,
particularly the coastal islands, and with its eastern most
range reaching into Idaho and Montana.
With this understanding, it wouldn’t have surprised me
to find out that wildfires had had a major impact on the
supply situation, but to my surprise, speaking to contacts in
Vancouver, Canada, the real heart of the WRC industry, I was
told that there had been no major impact from fires. They
intimated that none of their red cedar forest areas had been
burnt and therefore caused no effect to the overall supply
position; certainly an unexpected response given the feedback
I had in Australia, so what is the so called ‘real’ picture.
There has been some indirect impact as some of the
species in the fire affected areas such as Californian
TED RIDDLE
DISCUSSES THE ISSUES REGARDING SUPPLY AND DEMAND OF WESTERN RED CEDAR AFTER THE GFC
AND WILDFIRES THAT SPREAD ACROSS THE PACIFIC NORTH WEST.
TIMBER TOPS
TED RIDDLE
CANADA
ALASKA
Distribution of Western
Red Cedar
UNITED
STATES OF
AMERICA
PLEASE NOTE: THE ABOVE DIAGRAM IS FOR ILLUSTRATIVE PURPOSES ONLY.