Manufacturers account for 16 percent of the New Brunswick gross domestic product. And in 2003, the province recorded 2.7 per cent growth in the value of manufacturing shipments versus a 0.8 per cent decline nationally.
      Among the corporations helping the province to that bottom line as they helped their own were the three companies honored in May 2004 with the New Brunswick Export Achievement Awards. One was a Boise Cascade subsidiary, Boise AllJoist Ltd., which operates a 170-employee engineered wood products (EWP) plant in St.-Jacques. The I-beam plant sends most of its product to the U.S. residential construction market, and that market's success is part of the reason an expansion is on the way.
      Larry Henderson is operations manager for that plant as well as three other EWP plants in Louisiana, Idaho and Oregon. He says the plant has already tripled its output since Boise bought the 100-employee plant in July 2000, and is now approaching 75 million lineal ft. (22.9 lineal m.) per year of I-joists.
      "They're all going primarily into residential, but all our business has grown, and is growing this year by over 30 percent," he says. "With the efforts of our distribution and sales teams, we've grown much faster than the industry has."
      The St.-Jacques growth will feature about US$6 million worth of new equipment and building, covering 30,000 sq. ft. (2,787 sq. m.). It comes on top of the company's purchase of a rail siding a few miles away, which supplements the plant's daily output of 70-80 trucks' worth of product with the capability of loading some 10 railcars weekly.
      Henderson says that transportation burden is the greatest challenge of doing business in the town of 30,000, shipping raw material in and product out "quite a ways away from the main line." But he lauds the business orientation of government officials, saying "I've never worked with officials in the city and province that have been more cooperative."
      He adds that the EWP division is adding some 15 percent to its plant in Alexandria, La., and has other projects on the drawing board awaiting approval. "We intend to continue to grow this part of the business," he says.
      Also growing is AV Cell, a joint venture of Tembec and the Aditya Birla Group of India, which will invest an additional US$18 million in an ongoing project to upgrade its sulphite mill in Atholville. The JV first invested US$21.8 million back in 1998, when the pulp mill was idle.
      He could have been speaking for the province's position in the industry as well. The overall forest products industry in New Brunswick employs more than 17,000 people, with the total productive forest covering some 14.6 million acres (5.9 million hectares), according to the New Brunswick Forest Products Association.
      Approximately 80 companies in the sector account for up to 40 percent of exports and generate enough tax revenue to sustain close to five percent of total government expenditures. While some concern has been raised about fiber shortages in the region, increased spending on softwood cultivation on government-owned land is projected to not only create its own crop of seasonal jobs (850 over five years), but sow the seeds for further industry investment as well.