North American Panel Production on Record-Setting Pace

North American structural wood panel production, buoyed by continued strong housing demand, is forecast to reach a record-setting 37.5 billion square feet this year, up approximately 620 million feet, or 1.7 percent from last year. The projected total would mark the sixth consecutive annual production record. The forecast includes 19 billion feet of plywood production and 18.5 billion feet of oriented strand board.

Laminated veneer lumber production, meanwhile, also is expected to hit a record high 47 million cubic feet this year, up nearly 25 percent from 1997.

Hardwood Plywood Imports Up

U.S. imports of hardwood plywood--led by a fourfold increase from Malaysia--rose 52 million square feet, or eight percent through the first four months of the year compared to the same period in 1997, according to U.S. Department of Agriculture statistics. Asian imports overall increased 25 percent for the period compared to 1997, a rate that annualized translates to an increase of approximately 240 million square feet, or roughly 1.3 percent of projected North American plywood production this year.

The statistics lend credence to concerns that Asian currency woes, by reducing the cost of Asian plywood in U.S. and Canadian dollars while increasing pressure on Asian producers to penetrate non-traditional markets, pose at least some threat to North American softwood plywood market share. Although plywood imports compete more directly with domestic hardwood than with softwood plywood, some of the rising import volume is likely to seek a greater share of nonregulated softwood plywood markets, such as furniture and fixtures or other industrial applications.

I-Joist Floor Market Share Approaching 40 Percent

Wood I-joists, which last year held a one-third share of the residential floor market, are expected to capture a 40 percent share this year. North American I-joist production is forecast to reach 760 million linear feet this year, up 21 percent from the 627 million feet produced in 1997. The forecasts for 1999 and 2000 are 895 and 996 million linear feet, respectively.

Especially noteworthy is that the increase in demand and production is outpacing housing starts during a period of depressed lumber prices. That suggests, concludes APA Market Research Manager Craig Adair, that growing numbers of builders simply prefer wood I-joists because of better performance, reduced waste, home buyer salability, or other benefits.

Glulam Production Expected to Rebound Following Two-Year Decline

North American production of glulam timber is forecast to rise to 340 million board feet next year following two consecutive years of decline. Production this year is expected to finish below the 315 million feet recorded in 1997, with most of the decline attributable to economic woes and a 1997 consumption tax in Japan, the industry. s largest export market.

Answers to Rail Gridlock Due from Transportation Board

The Surface Transportation Board (STB) is expected in October to announce actions it will take, if any, in response to filings by customers that Union Pacific Railroad holds a monopolistic advantage that is causing rail shipment gridlock in key markets, particularly in the Gulf Coast region.

Union Pacific merged with Southern Pacific Railroad in 1996 under a plan approved by STB but criticized before and since by other regulatory agencies, industry organizations and customers. STB is a Department of Transportation agency with broad economic regulatory oversight of railroads, including rates, car service and interchange, mergers and line acquisitions.

Union Pacific, for its part, has acknowledged a "service crisis", but maintains that the solution "lies in completing the process of realizing the efficiencies of the UP/SP merger in Texas and the surrounding states" rather than in regulation. UP was to have responded to the STB filings by Sept. 18. The board last year ordered short-term emergency measures to alleviate conjestion in the Gulf Coast area. Those measures expired Aug. 2, however.

FAS Earmarks $6.2 Million for Industry Export Promotion

The U.S. wood products industry received approximately $6.2 million for export market promotion under the USDA Foreign Agricultural Service (FAS) 1998 Market Access Program (MAP) allocation. MAP funding supports such activities as regulatory advocacy, demonstration projects, public relations and other market access efforts. Additional Foreign Market Development (FMD) allocations support the maintenance of U.S. industry offices in key foreign markets.

The wood products industry. s allocation was approximately seven percent of the total MAP funding for U.S. agricultural commodity promotion overseas, and third in ranking behind the U.S. cotton and meat industries.

WPPC Ponders Public Information Campaign

A North American survey to measure public perception of wood products versus steel, concrete and plastic--and thus to help assess the need for an industrywide public information campaign--is nearing completion by the Wood Products Promotion Council (WPPC), a coalition of industry trade associations founded in 1982. Survey sponsors are APA, Canadian Wood Council, and Southern Forest Products Association.

The survey is in response to recent strategic plans and actions by competing industries and preservationist groups that pose a threat to North American wood product demand. Both the steel and plastics industries, for example, have well-funded consumer campaigns under way. The concrete industry reportedly is considering a similar campaign. And the Natural Resources Defense Council has cited the reduction of wood use in residential construction as among its goals.

Pending the results of the survey and findings from recent focus groups, WPPC may then develop a long-range strategic plan for broad-based industry review, said APA Marketing Vice President and WPPC Steering Committee member Dennis Hardman. For more information, contact Hardman at 253-620-7422.

Plywood Pioneers Expanding Company History Series

Four new monographs covering the early history of industry companies and mills are being developed by the Plywood Pioneers Association, association President (and former American Plywood Association President) Bill Robison announced. The four include Coe Manufacturing Company, Simpson Timber Company, the Edward Hines Lbr. Co. (later Westfir Plywood Corp.) plywood mill in Westfir, Ore., and the Bohemia Lumber Company plywood mill in Culp Creek, Ore.

The Pioneers Association's 20 other existing monographs include Portland Manufacturing Company, which opened as the industry. s first commercial plywood mill in 1905, to Georgia-Pacific Corporation. s Fordyce, Ark. plant, which opened in 1964 as the first southern pine plywood mill.

The price per monograph is $2; a complete set of all 20 is $35. To order copies or to apply for membership in the Plywood Pioneers Association, contact Billie Larson at 253-620-7231. Persons with more than 20 years of industry experience are eligible to join.

Texas Adopts New Coastal Zone Building Code

A new building code designed to reduce losses from Gulf Coast hurricanes went into effect in Texas June 1. The new code, which applies to homes and other non-engineered buildings constructed within 25 miles of the Gulf of Mexico, embodies the results of 25 years of research on wind-resistant construction, according to Lyndon Anderson, associate commissioner of the Texas Department of Insurance.

Among the code. s requirements are the use of structural wood panel shear walls to transfer roof and floor loads to the foundation, protection of all openings to withstand the impact of wind-borne debris, and the use of specific grades and species of lumber for wood frame walls and rafters. APA helped develp the shear wall provisions of the new code.

Think Tank Doesn't Think Much of ESA Success Claims

Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt announced in May that 34 threatened or endangered species would be considered for delisting, and cited the news with much-publicized fanfare as proof that the 1973 Endangered Species Act (ESA) is working.

According to the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI), a Washington, D.C. nonprofit public policy group, the numbers don't quite add up, however. Of the 34 species Secretary Babbitt proclaimed to be ESA success stories, not one, argues CEI, was legitimately recovered because of the ESA. The majority of the species either went extinct (5), were not in trouble to begin with but were listed because of "data errors" (12), or are ineligible for delisting (1). While the status of the remaining 16 species has improved, the ESA has had almost nothing to do with their recovery, says CEI.

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