From oil to liquefied natural gas to minerals, when it comes to making money on B.C.’s natural resources Asia is almost always the final destination.
And recently there’s one type of rock the Chinese are particularly interested in: B.C.’s official stone, jade, which is turning into green gold for miners in the province.
China has been mining jade, dubbed the “Stone of Heaven,” for so long that high-grade supplies are running out. That’s left more and more investors looking to B.C. to find it, pushing the price of the province’s jade to quadruple in the past few years alone.
A sizeable boulder of jade is worth millions of dollars, and they can be found – as one was just a few years ago by Vancouver dealer Earl Matheson and his partner.
“Just to look at it, you have to say, ‘Wow, that is an amazing piece of jade,’” Matheson said of the stone, which was eventually transformed into a Buddha by carvers in Thailand.
And that’s just the tip of the iceberg for B.C.’s multi-million dollar jade industry. In Jade City, Robin Bunce and his wife Claudia run the Cassiar Mountain Jade Store on Highway 37, and mine from nearby claims.
They’ve recently had a significant part of their business bought out by Chinese investors.
The couple says stone deposits aren’t difficult to find in northwestern B.C.
“Here, you can see the rock,” Bunce said. “Whereas gold, you hope you will find it. Here, you can see the rock and you hope there’s quality in it.”
With a report from CTV British Columbia’s Ed Watson
