Timber officials in China are considering changes to their country’s building codes which, if approved, could open up the Chinese market to EU and North American lumber exporters.
Detailed plans of the uses of timber frame construction have been submitted by Canadian Forest Service (CFS) experts and are being considered by China’s Timber Construction Design Committee. If accepted the plans will need to be ratified by the Ministry of Construction.
Robert Jones, manager of industry relations for CFS, said a number of countries were looking at China and added: ‘We feel at this stage everyone could be working together to get the use of wood accepted there.
‘We have seen some forecasts of up to 50,000 new houses being built in the next five years using wood.’
Industry sources say that if North American wood codes are accepted, a barrier to European producers exporting construction wood to China could also be removed.
