Vernon-based Tolko Industries Ltd. has signed an agreement with China National Building Materials that, when added to an existing agreement between the two companies, should support 400 mill and woodland jobs and keep two mills in full production, the B.C. provincial government announced Monday.

The agreement is for spruce-pine-fir lumber, which will be distributed throughout China for a range of end-uses including concrete forms, remanufactured products for decorating and furniture, and structural framing and re-roofing, the government said in a news release.

"This agreement ... is yet another example of how the trade relationship between the B.C. forest industry and China just keeps getting stronger and stronger," Premier Gordon Campbell, who is in China, said in the release.

Tolko signed an earlier agreement with China National -- the countrys largest lumber distributor -- in November when Tolko executives were in China as part of a forest-industry trade mission.

"The cooperation between the B.C. forest industry and governments to promote wood use in China are key to the success were seeing today," Tolko president and CEO Brad Thorlakson said.

China is the fastest-growing export market for Canadian wood products, the release said. In 2009, B.C. lumber exports to China reached 1.63 billion board feet, double the volume of 2008. Those exports generated $327 million in revenues, a 70-per-cent increase from the previous year.

Exports to China in 2010 are off to an even faster start, with shipments in the first quarter double what they were in the first three months of 2009.

While those numbers are growing, Americans are still the provinces biggest customers, buying 7.48 billion board feet of lumber worth $1.54 billion in 2009.

Campbell, along with the premiers of Alberta and Saskatchewan, is in China meeting with business people and representatives of state-owned companies. On Monday, the trio opened a Western Canada trade and investment office in Shanghai.

On Sunday, Campbell, along with Stockwell Day, president of the Treasury Board and federal minister for the Asia-Pacific Gateway, opened a Vancouver pavilion at Shanghais Expo 2010 to showcase the value of B.C. wood as a construction material.

Day is on a trip to China and Japan to promote Canada. On Monday, he met with some of the major shipping and business leaders in Shanghai as well as China Eastern Airlines, the second-largest airline in China. Day was to announce an agreement today between the cities of Winnipeg and Cuntan in China to support increased trade and investment.