Canadian wood product sector demonstrated resilience, with a 0.6% increase in sales, reaching C$3.281 billion in November 2023, according to the monthly manufacturing report released by Statistics Canada.
However, when compared to the same month last year, there was a decrease of -7.8% in total sales for the wood product sector.
In terms of capacity utilization, the wood product manufacturing sector experienced a decrease from 81.6% in November 2022 to 77.5% in November 2023.
Canadian manufacturing sales increased 1.2% to $71.7 billion in November, mainly on higher sales in the chemical (+6.6%), primary metal (+4.0%) and machinery (+4.3%) subsectors. Sales in the motor vehicle industry group (-4.0%) declined the most. On a year-over-year basis, total sales were down 0.8% in November 2023.
Sales in constant dollars rose 1.6% in November, indicating that increased sales were driven by higher volumes as the Industrial Product Price Index fell 0.4% in November.
