Specialty \u2018custom cutters\u2019 added to BC Timber Sales program<\/p>\n
Published 11:41 am Monday, July 13, 2026<\/p>\n
B.C.\u2019s Forests ministry is expanding a program that allows value-added manufacturers to access BC Timber Sales logs to include specialty \u201ccustom cutters\u201d who supply unique wood products to buyers around the world.<\/p>\n
These manufacturers supply wood for everything from specialty windows and doors to Japanese temples. But unlike other value-added manufacturers that use BC Timber Sales logs, these businesses don\u2019t have their own mills.<\/p>\n
There are about 40 custom cutter companies in B.C., directly employing roughly 250 people.<\/p>\n
\u201cThese companies contribute heavily to our forest economy,\u201d Forests Minister Ravi Parmar said in a Monday announcement in Vancouver. \u201cThey make innovative value-added wood products and are an important part of the fourth sector value chain.\u201d<\/p>\n
The owner of one of these companies appeared alongside Parmar to explain.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe reason we don\u2019t own a sawmill is when you\u2019re custom cutting, you\u2019re customer-specific,\u201d said Tom Sundher, president of the Surrey-based Sundher Group. \u201cSo, to do that, we have to choose different mills that have different kinds of equipment to be able to process their wood.\u201d<\/p>\n
B.C.\u2019s value-added manufacturing program was created to aid small- and medium-sized companies that take forestry products and turn them into something more than dimensional lumber, and specifically restricted to manufacturers with no forest tenure, but who owned or leased a processing facility. <\/p>\n
The government established the program in 2023 by setting aside 10 per cent of BC Timber Sales tenure for small and medium-sized value-added manufacturers, increasing the allotment to 20 per cent in 2025.<\/p>\n
Parmar is increasingly focused on expanding value-added manufacturing in response to U.S. duties and tariffs, which have hit the dimensional lumber sector hard.<\/p>\n
\u201cTo build a future for forestry, B.C. will no longer just be simply a supplier of commodity dimensional lumber for Americans,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Specialty \u2018custom cutters\u2019 added to BC Timber Sales program Published 11:41 am Monday, July 13, 2026 B.C.\u2019s Forests…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":799844,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[194299],"tags":[903,49,48,87674],"class_list":["post-799843","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-surrey","tag-british-columbia","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-surrey"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/799843","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=799843"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/799843\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/799844"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=799843"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=799843"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=799843"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}