Japan: At 500th anniversary, JLR examines history and prospects for Japanese wood sector
27/06/2008 - 16:09
Japan Lumber Reports (JLR) published its 500th edition, which contained a special issue on past events in and prospects for the Japanese wood industry. Since the publication’s inception, there were a number of major events that shaped the wood industry over the last 22 years, a number of which are mentioned below. Most recently, the announcement and subsequent implementation of the high Russian log export duty from 25% to 80% by 2009 is expected to have a major impact on the Japanese wood trade, since Russian logs are the highest imported amount of logs by volume. Secondly, since the wood industry has had to reduce its reliance on imports, Japan’s domestic forest resources have been growing. Third, forest resources in South East Asia have been declining. Fourth, plywood manufacturing has madeway for substitution by other products such as
particleboard, MDF, insulation board, and OSB.
Other factors that have shaped the Japanese wood industry
in the last 20 years include: the restructuring of the wood
product trading businesses; the review of house safety
after the 1995 Kobe earthquake, which shifted house
construction away from wooden units; the aging
population and decreasing birth rate in Japan; the
acceptance of global warming as an important global
issue; and the introduction of European products.
Regarding prospects for the 2008 wood trade, JLR
believes that it will be difficult for businesses in Japan to
recover after Japanese housing starts dropped to new lows
last year due to the introduction of the Revised Building
Standards Act. It was also expected that lumber production
would slightly decrease as would production at plywood
mills. Plywood prices were expected to remain unchanged
through the year. Japan was also beginning to search for
alternatives to Russian logs for plywood mills and will
look mostly to domestic sources for replacement species.
Japan Log and Sawnwood Prices in Japan
Logs for Ply
Manufacture, CIF
Meranti (Hill, Sarawak)
