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Interview with Catherine Cobden, President and CEO, FPAC During PaperCon 2012 in
New Orleans, Paper360° had the opportunity to speak with Ms. Catherine
Cobden who is currently serving as interim President and CEO of the Forest
Products Association of Canada (FPAC) following the retirement of the
long-time CEO, Avrim Lazar. Previously Cobden was a Senior Vice President
of FPAC and for 22 years has been a passionate and strategic voice for
the forest products sector. She has taken a leadership role in encouraging
the economic and environmental transformation of the forest products industry
and has played a key role in developing the Canadian Forest Sector Transformation
Strategy. Q: Avrim Lazar has retired. Has a replacement been named? Q: What are some of the hot topics in the Canadian
pulp and paper industry today? While we were in that deep, dark place we didn't just sit back and wait
it out, as we may have been accused of doing previously. We did our homework
on how to transform the industry. We found opportunities in bioproducts
and today there are shifts going on in Canada in that regard. We also
saw opportunities in other areas such as serving the textile industry.
And I'm amazed about how specialty cellulose has grown in Canada. We are
really becoming a global leader of that product. We didn't appreciate
that there is a $200 billion biochemical market out there, and growing.
Now that we've been awakened to that potential, pulp mills are getting
more serious about taking the steps necessary to become the biorefineries
of the future. And the start up of CelluForce's NCC project has made the
rest of the world envious. We have completed a detailed investigation
of how to get the most value from every tree we cut. This has lead to
the Bio-pathways project where we identified 37 different pathways for
the forest products industry to transform itself. Our most impressive
work has been in the area of diversifying our market. We have built relationships
in China and to a lesser extent in India. The forest products sector is
now Canada's largest exporter of anything to China and the second largest
to India. Other Canadian sectors are looking at us for lessons to be learned.
Q: Such changes must have necessitated some new thinking. One of main parts of our study showed that in order to make
bioproducts efficiently, production should be integrated into current
facilities. But if you think about those operations that make the products,
also selling them to the world, it doesn't really make sense. So we started
exploring a model where we worked in partnership with chemical or aviation
companies, to help us move from a commodity to a niche mentality. A year
ago we established the bio-pathways partnership network open to suppliers
and technology providers around the world, as a way for our folks to meet
people in other sectors. Today we have 180 non-forest company participants.
I like to call it our "dating service" as companies come together to explore
opportunities. There's a tremendous interest in how the Canadian natural
resources can be used to make these new products, by the folks that might
be using those products in their own manufacturing. Q: Are you introducing
any other new programs? Q: You mentioned "green credentials" This groundbreaking agreement brought us
from essentially a "war in the woods," to consultation where we talked
"at" instead of "with" each other, to today where we are working together
to manage forests. It was a game-changing exercise for us. There is so
much work to do on that agreement and implementing it is a real priority,
but it doesn't happen easily. We have very different views of the world.
But when we sit down and talk through and understand where we have some
room and where we don't, we can make significant progress.
Q: How did the accord come about? CBFA is embedded with twin pillars in our strategy, economic as well
as environmental. But it is a massive umbrella agreement with lots of
opportunities. So we are going to work hard to implement it.
The Forest Products Association of Canada (FPAC) is the voice of
Canada's wood, pulp and paper producers nationally and internationally
in government, trade, and environmental affairs. Canada's forest products
industry is a 57 billion dollar a year industry that represents 12%
of Canada's manufacturing GDP. The industry is one of Canada's largest
employers, operating in 200 forest-dependent communities from coast
to coast, and directly employing 230,000 Canadians across the country.
Glenn Ostle is Editorial Director/Associate Publisher of Paper360°
magazine. He can be reached at: gostle@tappi.org.
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