A Word from the General Manager - May 2014

The Annual General Meeting brought together 40 members from across Canada to receive Committee reports and updates from both customers and suppliers.

Herman Long President of the CWPCA kicked off the meeting with an update of the associations major accomplishments over the past year highlighted by in signing a new three year agreement renewable with the CFIA that provided long term stability for our Heat Treat program.

We said good bye to three retiring directors, Blair McEwen from Bowmanville Wood Products, Shelly Luscombe from North Star Pallets and Tom Duguay from Cratex whose advice and hard work will be missed.

We welcomed three new members to the CWPCA Board of Directors Fred Vrugteveen from Niagara Pallet, Sukhi Brar from Advance Lumber Remanufacturing and Sean Meston from Calgary Pallet.

We had an update on Committee reports and initiatives on where the association is spending it’s time and money on behalf of members:

• Strategic Planning -Funding to promote the benefits of wood packaging $60,000 over the next five years.  
• Packaging – Pricing agreements for inspection services in 2015. 
• Social Media- Develop a new tool in the business-to-business (B2B) sector and help facilitate networking among members.
• CPC - Support of the Canadian Pallet Council ‘s continued existence in providing market opportunities to members 
• Finance – Headed up by our Treasurer Scott Geffros,
• provided our audited 2013 Financial Statements which can be viewed on the members’ only website. We are pleased reported that the association is in a strong financial position. 

And I thought our industry had supply chain problems this winter. We heard from Ruth Snowden, President of the Canadian International Freight Forwarders who represent one of major markets for export crating and containers and the serious financial impact that the Port of Vancouver labor dispute has had on their member’s ability to meet customer expectations. 

We heard from Brian Zak with All Forest Solutions about securing our raw material supply with reductions in the Allowable Annual Cut in BC and Quebec and it’s implication for the wood packaging industry over the next five years. His presentation can be viewed   on our member’s only website for review.

We also heard from:

• Doug Taylor on the new streamlined work processes with the new Grove Ware Business Automation project for our the CWPCP program,
• Norm Kramer of the Workplace Safety and Prevention Association on our new safety initiative,
• Our first general manager and founding member of the CWPCA Doug Summerhayes on how to bring in new members to our association. 

We closed out the meeting with a strategic planning session that will help ensure that the future directions of committee work as well as the efforts of association staff are focused on areas that our members value the most. 

As your general manager I represent the our industry on the Canadian Forest Phytosanitary Working Group (CFPWG) where we met in April with the Canadian Food Inspection Agency  to address issues around ensuring global market access for Canadian wood products and ensuring that wood exports are safe and pest free. I can report that the US has still not made a decision on changes to the ISPM-15 Bilateral Agreement on Wood Packaging Material. 

Your association has been working closely over the last few months  with the ThinkPoint Group commissioned by the CFIA to conduct an Economic Assessments of the Impacts of the Removal of the ISPM-15 Bilateral Agreement  and the results are expected to be made public this summer.