Duties placed on Canadian lumber entering the U.S. could eventually help Northwest Montana markets, a local mill manager is saying -- but they are still a few months out.

There’s a misconception that the recent tariffs against Canadian goods extend to lumber products, F.H. Stoltze Land and Lumber Vice President and General Manager Paul McKenzie said last week.

The U.S.-Canada lumber market is governed under a separate and oft disputed softwood agreement that places duties on Canadian lumber. The duties are supposed to keep Canadians from dumping subsidized lumber onto U.S. markets. 

They currently amount to about 14% combined. By August or September, they’re expected to climb to 34%, McKenzie noted. 

“That will be helpful to us,” McKenzie said. 

Stoltze has operated its mill in Columbia Falls for more than 100 years and is one of the last large independent mills in Montana. 

McKenzie said Canadians are currently dumping their products into the U.S. ahead of the hike in duties. 

On the local front, the Forest Service is still trying to get a sale in the North Fork area sold. It offered the Center Mountain Timber sale last year with a minimum bid of $9.32 a ton for relatively small (6-inch breast height diameter lodgepole and 7-inch breast height diameter spruce) but received no bids. 

Now it has dropped the minimum bid price to $1.69 per ton. The sale, located up Whale Creek, is part of the larger Frozen Moose project. 

“It’s important work we’d really like to see done,” said Flathead National Forest Service spokeswoman Kira Powell. Thus the reason for reducing the contract amounts. 

But McKenzie noted that North Fork sales are expensive. For one, the roads are rough and dirt. Whale Creek is about 40 miles from pavement, so loggers can’t make as many trips a day as they can on roads that are paved. 

This sale comes with about 5 miles of road construction. Its estimated yield, according to the Forest Service, is about 17,500 tons of lodgepole and 12,600 tons of spruce and other species. 

Plus smaller diameter trees need to be at minimum about 5 inches in diameter at the top to make a stud out of. If not, they’re then good for post and poles, but those mills are in Eureka and Olney, which is even farther away. 

McKenzie suggested that some North Fork timber sales might better be stewardship sales, where the Forest Service pays to have lands thinned, as the timber isn’t worth much, if anything. 

In some cases, it’s simply thinned, then ground up or burned as slash, as the trees are extremely thick. 

Stewardship sales can pay about $2,000 an acre for a small sale. 

McKenzie said the local industry needs a consistent supply of material to survive and he’s optimistic for the long term. Montana grows great trees, he said. 

“We make really good lumber,” he said. 

The company has paused plans to add a cross laminated timber plant in Columbia Falls, which could utilize smaller trees. McKenzie said the economics and the market of a facility at this time don't work out.