II. The demand for wood and wood products

Sawnwood
Wood-based panels
Wood pulp products
Roundwood
Fuelwood
Aggregate world demand for wood up to 1975

The purpose of the present chapter is to consider in some detail the specific nature of the uses to which the different forms of wood and wood products are put - in fact to examine the nature and evolution of the demand for wood in its different forms.

The global aggregates are summarized in Table II-1. In 1951,¹ the recorded world production and use amounted to about 810 million cubic meters of industrial wood and about 870 million cubic meters of fuelwood. By 1961, these two quantities had grown to about 1,020 and 880 million cubic meters. On this global level, virtually all the increase was therefore accounted for by the increased use of wood by industry - an increase which over the ten years amounted to about 25 percent.

¹ Throughout the study the data shown for 1951,1956 and 1961 are annual averages for the periods 1950-52,

1955-57 and 1960-62. The sources and coverage of the data are shown in the Appendix, which also defines the geographical areas referred to throughout.

As is shown by the table, the various products which are made from industrial wood raw material experienced sharply different fortunes during the same period. The world's use of wood in the round (pitprops, poles, posts, etc.) did not grow. But world consumption of sawnwood rose by about 30 percent, its use of paper and paperboard grew by about 75 per cent, while consumption of the wood-based panel products grew even faster - with a more than doubling in the quantities of fibreboard used, an almost two-and-a-half times increase in the amount of plywood and the emergence during the decade of a virtually new product, particle board, which by 1961 was being used on a large and very fast-growing scale.

TABLE II-1. - CHANGE IN RECORDED WORLD USE OF WOOD AND WOOD PRODUCTS, 1950-52 TO 1963

	Million units	1950-52	1955-57	1960-62	1963	Change 1951-61
						Volume	Index
ROUNDWOOD							1951 = 100
Sawlogs¹ and veneer logs	Cubic meters	493,4	582,2	648,3	656,7	+ 154,9	131
Pulpwood² and pitprops	"	185,6	233,5	256,6	257,1	+ 70,0	138
Other industrial wood	"	3129,2	125,0	116,2	118,2	- 13,0	90
Total industrial wood	"	808,2	940,7	1020,1	1032,0	+ 211,9	126
Fuelwood	"	3865,6	876,1	876,5	886,5	+ 10,9	101
TOTAL	"	1673,8	1816,8	1896,6	1918,5	+ 222,8	113
WOOD PRODUCTS
Sawnwood4	Cubic meters	266,1	309,6	341,0	354,2	+ 74,9	128
Paper and paperboard	Metric tons	44,3	59,4	77,3	84,0	+ 33,0	174
Plywood	Cubic meters	6,8	11,3	16,8	20,1	+ 10,0	247
Fibreboard	Metric tons	2,2	3,3	4,5	5,3	+ 2,3	210
Particle board	Metric tons	0,04	0,57	2,29	3,56	+ 2,25	5900
Roundwood5	Cubic meters	3129,2	125,0	116,2	118,2	- 13,0	90

¹ Includes logs for sleepers. - ² Includes roundwood used for the manufacture of particle board and fibreboard. - ³ Production - ⁴ Includes sleepers. - ⁵ Excludes pitprops.

The variety of experience within the sector was therefore considerable and this necessitates considering each product, or group of products, separately. The situation in the various regions of the world is also very different. As is shown in Table II-2, the pattern of use varies very widely. Whereas in Africa and Latin America nearly nine tenths of the wood used is consumed in its raw form, in North America only one fifth is used in this way, the other four fifths being used in the form of sawnwood, plywood, paper, etc. As the growth in overall demand for wood in a region where it is used principally as fuel, for which there is little growth in demand as income rises, is very different from growth in a region where much of it is used as paper and paperboard, for which demand grows vigorously as incomes grow, the tempo of change in consumption of wood and wood products also varies widely from region to region.

One further introductory point needs to be made.

TABLE II-2. - THE OF ESTIMATED TOTAL WOOD USE IN 1960-62

	Sawnwood (m³)	Panel products¹ (m³)	Pulp products² (MT)	Roundwood [m³ ®]	Total industrial3,4	Fuelwood [m³ ®]
	Million units
Europe	78,31	8,41	22,87	36,60	246,80	107,90
U.S.S.R	99,72	2,24	3,47	67,30	249,70	100,90
North America	94,37	16,25	37,37	18,60	308,70	46,10
Latin America	12,39	0,52	2,66	8,50	38,60	192,40
Africa	4,05	0,37	0,90	13,30	23,70	182,70
Asia-Pacific	57,33	2,75	10,20	44,10	176,20	457,60
WORLD TOTAL	346,20	30,50	77,50	188,00	1044,00	1088,00

¹ Excludes veneer. - ² Includes some nonwood fiber products, excludes dissolving pulp. - ³ The product quantities have been converted into equivalent volumes of roundwood using the standard factors published in FAO, Yearbook of forest products statistics. No allowance has been made at this stage for the variation in transformation ratio from region to region, for variation within an industry or over time, nor has the volume of wood raw material supplied in the form of wood residues been subtracted. These matters will be considered in Chapter IV. The present estimates of roundwood equivalent are intended to do no more than give a preliminary indication of the broad orders of magnitude of the wood raw material corresponding to the estimates of consumption of wood products presented in this chapter. - ⁴ Excludes wood raw material equivalents of veneer and dissolving pulp consumption.

For most wood products much if not most of any change in consumption is due to concurrent changes in income; in other words, income is usually the main explanatory variable. There are other important variables, in particular price. But consumption tends to change much less in response to change in price than to change in income, and this, together with the fact that over any appreciable period income has usually changed much more than price, has meant that income is far the more important variable in explaining and projecting demand for most wood products. Much of the analysis that follows rests upon this relationship between consumption and income. ^2,3 But the link between income and demand for wood and wood products must necessarily be an indirect one as most wood products are producer goods and not consumer goods. In other words, they are not finally consumed as sawnwood, plywood, paper, etc., but as doors, furniture, packaging, etc. The growing demand for these wood products is therefore an indirect result of the actual increase in demand for these goods and services - and will parallel this growth only insofar as wood products continue to be used to manufacture doors, furniture, packaging, etc.

² In discussing it, use is made of the useful term, the apparent income elasticity of consumption or demand, i.e., the proportionate change in consumption associated with a given proportionate change in income.

³ As was noted in chapter I, most of the estimates of future requirements deployed in this study are based on the assumption that in the period to 1975 there will be no significant change in the trend in prices of forest products relative to prices of their nearest substitutes experienced during the regent past, and it is further assumed that the effects of such continued price trends will be explained by the apparent relationship between consumption and income which obtained during that period.

The analysis of the trends in use of each product that follows is therefore concerned with three principal questions:

1. To what extent is growth in the world economy accompanied by growth in demand for the activities and products which use wood a

2. To what extent is substitution in favor of or against individual wood products affecting their continued use in these activities and products a

3. To what extent are changes, both in technology and in the structure of needs, opening up new uses for wood and new forms in which wood can be used a

Sawnwood

The geographical pattern of sawnwood use
End uses of sawnwood
Factors affecting the use of sawnwood
Prospects for the period up to 1975
Requirements in 1975

Sawnwood is the simplest of the processed wood products, the one most easy to produce, and the one with the longest history of use. It remains the most common processed form in which wood is used: about two thirds of all the roundwood processed industrially in the world is sawn. The world's recorded consumption of sawnwood amounted to 266 million cubic meters in 1951, rising to 310 million in 1956 and to 341 million in 1961. By 1963 consumption had reached 354 million cubic meters. But in some parts of the world additional unrecorded quantities are consumed - usually sawnwood which is cut locally by handsawyers or other small sawyers. In Table II-3, an attempt has been made to estimate this unrecorded portion in order to arrive at an approximate measure of the world's total consumption of sawnwood in 1961. As is shown in the table, this apparently amounted to a volume in the order of 345 million cubic meters in that year. About 265 million cubic meters of this was sawn softwood (coniferous species) and 80 million cubic meters was sawn hardwood (broadleaved species). The recorded use of each in the different regions is shown in Table II-4.

Too little is known about the unrecorded margin to say how it might have changed as a share of total consumption of sawnwood over the years. It has been assumed here that it would not have changed appreciably in the period considered, and that consequently the rate of growth in recorded consumption reflects the growth in the total.

This rate of growth averaged 3.1 percent per annum during the period 1951 to 1956 and 2.0 percent between 1956 and 1961. Over the decade as a whole consumption grew by 28 percent - not much more than the growth in population during that time (24 percent). In fact, during the latter half of the decade use of sawnwood was growing more slowly. Therefore for the world as a whole, though not by any means for all its constituent regions, the growth in income per caput experienced during the recent past called forth little if any rise in consumption of sawnwood per head. On a global basis use of sawnwood has not been keeping pace with the growth in economic activity -indeed in some countries even the absolute quantities of sawnwood consumed have been declining.

TABLE II-3. - GROWTH IN RECORDED CONSUMPTION OF SAWNWOOD, 1950-52 TO 1963, AND ESTIMATED TOTAL CONSUMPTION, 1960 - 62¹

¹ See also Annex Table II-B. - ² Estimated total consumption in 1960-62 differs from that recorded by an allowance for unrecorded consumption,

The geographical pattern of sawnwood use

The intensity with which sawnwood is used is far from uniform throughout the world (Annex Table II-B). The 14 percent of the world's population living in just three countries - Canada, the United States and the U.S.S.R. consumes 55 percent of the sawnwood used. By contrast, the 67 percent of the world's population living in Latin America, Africa (excluding southern Africa) and Asia (excluding Japan) consumes only 11 percent.

In terms of the forest zones of the world, the greater part of the sawnwood used is consumed in the regions which encompass or border on the great northern coniferous forests - North America, the U.S.S.R., Europe and Japan. Three quarters of the sawnwood consumed in the world is sawn softwood, and most of it is used in these regions. By contrast, relatively little sawnwood is used in the regions which contain the great hardwood resources of the world western Africa, southeast Asia, Central America and the northern part of South America. These regions together consume about 4 percent of the sawnwood used in the world. Only some of this difference in level of use can be ascribed to the differences in the properties of conifers and tropical hardwoods. Nor is it by any means wholly or even largely due to their smaller populations - or at least not directly so: per caput consumption of sawnwood in these tropical areas is only one tenth of that in the temperate countries considered earlier in this paragraph.

Consumption of sawnwood per head is even lower in the great heavily populated belt stretching through south Asia and China (Mainland) which neither possesses nor has ready access to either of the forest-rich zones. The evident shortage of supply in these regions is due not just to the physical scarcity of domestically produced wood, but also to the lack of purchasing power to import.

In Annex Table II-A, the range of different levels of use per caput obtaining in the different subregions of the world is tabulated against the gross domestic product (GDP) per caput expressed in U.S. dollars. These data show that there is a positive association between income and consumption per head when viewed in this cross-sectional fashion. But, it should be noted at once that the development of sawnwood consumption over time does not necessarily follow such a path, and in a number of subregions, at various different levels of development, consumption per head has actually been declining with rising per caput income. This point, and the sharply different experience of the various regions during the recent past, underlines the fact that there are a number of different factors bearing upon the use of sawnwood, some of them to a degree which causes rapid shifts in its use, and with an aggregate effect which can be very different from place to place.

TABLE II-4. - GROWTH IN RECORDED CONSUMPTION OF CONIFEROUS AND BROADLEAVED SAWNWOOD,¹ 1950-52 TO 1963

	Consumption				Change
	1950-52	1955-57	1960-62	1963	1951-61	1956-61
	Million m³				1951 = 100	1956 = 100
CONIFEROUS SAWNWOOD
Europe	48,61	55,77	61,56	61,85	127	110
U.S.S.R.	47,18	64,10	83,86	82,84	178	131
North America	84,05	83,44	77,87	82,19	93	93
Latin America	4,79	5,01	5,03	4,72	115	100
Africa	1,97	1,81	2,12	2,12	108	117
Asia Pacific	17,76	28,08	34,01	38,44	192	121
WORLD TOTAL	204,36	238,22	264,45	272,17	129	111
BROADLEAVED SAWNWOOD
Europe	9,98	11,90	14,27	15,21	143	120
U.S.S.R.	8,39	11,70	15,86	15,78	189	136
North America	19,05	17,94	15,82	17,88	83	88
Latin America	6,47	7,01	6,25	6,06	97	89
Africa	1,02	1,48	1,48	1,43	145	100
Asia-Pacific	11,67	15,36	18,03	21,17	154	117
WORLD TOTAL	56,57	65,39	71,71	77,53	127	110

¹ The sum of coniferous and broadleaved sawnwood does not add to total sawnwood because the latter includes sawn sleepers which for most countries are not reported separately under coniferous and broadleaved.

End uses of sawnwood

Sawnwood has a wide variety of different end uses, and this contributes to its varying fortunes: the various use sectors may be of sharply different relative importance in different countries or may each evolve in quite different ways. Table II-5 summarizes the end-use pattern for a number of countries and regions. In all, construction accounts for from one half to three fifths of total sawnwood used, furniture and packaging being the other major uses, and mining and railway sleepers as minor but still important uses. The fact that the miscellaneous category is always a large share of the total reflects the fact that sawnwood is also used in a host of lesser applications.

Though there is everywhere this roughly similar pattern of end use, within a sector the actual level of sawnwood use tends to vary very widely from area to area. To take housing, the largest single end use of sawnwood nearly everywhere, as an example: in the United States, an average of 20.5 cubic meters of sawnwood is used for each new dwelling; in northwestern Europe, the figure is 6.8 cubic meters; in the Mediterranean countries of Europe, 3.7 cubic meters: and in south Asia, less than 1 cubic meter is used (in the rural areas of south Asia, less than 0.2 cubic meter).

There are of course large differences in dwelling size involved, but sawnwood is also used for a widely different range of uses within the housing sector in the different regions. In the United States, sawnwood is a principal structural material used for the framework of housing and for the roof and floor supports; it is also often used for sheathing the walls, and for flooring, doors and door frames, window frames, shelving, built-in cupboards and other items of joinery; for finishing and fittings; and for formwork, scaffolding and other site uses. In northwestern Europe, sawnwood is practically never used for the structure or sheathing of walls, it is seldom used as floor supports and has only a limited use for roof support structures; it is used for joinery, finishings, fittings and formwork. In southern Europe, sawnwood is used for little else than joinery, finishing and fittings. In south Asia, it is used only for joinery. The scope for and likelihood of change in sawnwood use in construction are consequently quite different in different parts of the world.

In its other uses there is less variability. In the manufacture of furniture, sawnwood is used almost universally for carcassing, and to a more variable degree for sheathing and partitioning. In packaging, it is used to make crates, boxes and pallets. In mining, it is used for lagging between roadway supports, and for temporary roof support. Its use as railway sleepers is self-explanatory.

TABLE II-5. - CONSUMPTION OF SAWNWOOD BY END USES IN SELECTED REGIONS

SOURCES: U. S. Forest Service. Timber trends in the United States. Washington, D.C., 1965. Forest Resource Report No. 17. - United Nations/FAO. European timber trends and prospects: a new appraisal, 1950-1975. New York, 1964. - United Nations/FAO. Latin American timber trends and prospects. New York, 1963. - United Nations/FAO. Timber trends and prospects in the Asia-Pacific region. Rome, 1961. - United Nations. Economic Commission for Africa. African timber trends and prospects. Addis Ababa, 1965.

¹ Includes some " other " end uses. -² Includes some packaging and sleepers.

Factors affecting the use of sawnwood

Given this variety in use and circumstance of use it is clearly difficult to discuss in the general and summary terms of the present study the nature of and reasons for changes in the use of sawnwood. But some overall trends can be discerned. For a comprehensive treatment of a particular end use or area the reader is referred, as everywhere in the study, to the detailed regional and sector studies upon which the present analysis is based.

As has been indicated earlier, in recent years sawnwood use has not kept pace with the growth in economic activity. Indeed in a number of countries, and most notably in those in which it had previously been used heavily, its use has declined not only in proportionate but also in absolute terms. There are a number of factors which separately or together can have caused this.

In the first place, some end-use activities themselves may have been slow growing, stagnant or even declining. In North America and much of Europe, for example, the volume of coal mined underground has fallen and the length of railway track has been reduced, contributing significantly to the fall in mine timbers and wooden railroad sleepers used.

Secondly, within a sector there may have been a shift toward activities which require less sawnwood. For instance, in the housing sector multidwelling buildings use substantially less sawnwood per unit than single dwellings, and the rapid shift toward building a greater share of new housing as multidwelling units (see Table II-6) has had a marked effect in reducing the average consumption of sawnwood per dwelling: a reduction which implies no change in the amount of sawnwood used to build a particular kind of dwelling, of a given size, in a given place.

Thirdly, sawnwood may be used more efficiently and economically so that less is required to serve a given purpose. In particular, very considerable advances have been made in using wood for structural purposes. Among such developments are stress grading, which enables the designer to take full advantage of the properties of wood while reducing the margin of error in estimating its ultimate and working stress; the rational design of joints, which allows for the use of smaller sections and reduces the number of auxiliary parts; and the introduction of glued laminates. In effect, proper engineering design has entered the field of sawnwood construction: a necessary rationalization of its use if it was to remain competitive with other structural materials. Those countries with high per caput use of sawnwood - Canada, Australasia, Scandinavia, the United States, the U.S.S.R. - are those where it is used extensively for structural purposes. As these structural applications form such a large part of total sawnwood use in these countries, the tendency to economize in the use of sawnwood for this purpose has contributed sharply to the decline in aggregate quantities used in many of them. This is brought out in the Swedish data reproduced in Table II-7 (which also serves to illustrate both the share of total use accounted for by the structural elements, and the differences within a given country in sawnwood use in single and multifamily units).

Savings, based on better design and more efficient use, have also contributed to the continued competitiveness of sawnwood in the manufacture of furniture and packaging. In such uses as mining supports and railway sleepers, where much if not most of annual utilization is of a replacement nature, improved treatment of sawnwood has lengthened its life and so reduced the frequency of replacement,

TABLE II-6. - PERCENTAGE OF NEW DWELLINGS IN MULTIDWELLING BUILDINGS Ix SELECTED COUNTRIES

	Base year		1960
EUROPE
Finland	1957	42	52
Norway	1951	21	30
Sweden	1950	71	74
Austria	1950	50	62
Belgium.	1950	* 20	30
Denmark	1950	61	45
Germany, Fed. Rep. of.	1950	60	54
France	1955	* 41	* 58
Netherlands	1955	41	46
Switzerland	1950	¹ 73	¹76
United Kingdom	1951	7	14
Greece	1957-59	11	19
Spain	1957	72	75
Turkey	1950	20	8
Yugoslavia	1957	36	50
Czechoslovakia	1956	50	75
NORTH AMERICA
United States.	1940-49	12	² 29
Canada	1950	14	³ 36

SOURCES: Annual bulletin of housing and building statistics for Europe, 1960 and 1961. Geneva, United Nations, 1961 and 1962 (Table 7, p. 20 and 21). Timber Trends in the United States, op. cit. Timber trends and prospects in Canada.

* FAO estimate. -¹ Including two-dwelling houses. - ² 1962. - ³ 1963.

TABLE II-7. - THE USE OF SAWNWOOD IN HOUSING IN SWEDEN IN 1938, 1951 AND 1959

Type of building	1938	1951	1959
SMALL HOUSES OF WOOD	m³/100 m² of floor area
Outer walls	20	14	7
Inner walls	8	5	3
Floors	11	7	4
Roof and attic floor	13	10	9
Joinery and moldings	8	7	6
Scaffolding and formwork	3	2	2
Total	63	45	31
SMALL HOUSES OF BRICK AND STONE
Outer walls	-	-	-
Inner walls	2	1	1
Floors	8	4	3
Roof and attic floor	14	11	8
Joinery and moldings	9	7	6
Scaffolding and formwork.	4	3	4
Total	37	26	22
APARTMENT BUILDINGS OF BRICK AND STONE
Outer walls	-	-	1
Inner walls	1	-	-
Floors	9	3	1
Roof and attic floor	7	3	1
Joinery and moldings	7	7	5
Scaffolding and formwork.	10	7	6
Total	34	20	14

SOURCE: United Nations/FAO. European timber trends and prospects: a new appraisal, 1950-1975. New York, 1964.

It should be noted that none of the above factors involves the actual replacement of sawnwood. In other words much of the decline in the intensity with which it is used has been due to structural changes in the pattern of needs, or to a more economical use of sawnwood in meeting specific needs.

The fourth factor to be considered is the actual substitution of other materials for sawnwood. This may be due to initial cost or cost in use or to technological change. In the first case it may simply be that the cost of sawnwood has risen relative to other materials. The movements of prices of selected important sawnwood grades on some of the major world markets are shown in Table II-8 and compared with general price movements in these countries. The data assembled in the table do not show any consistent tendency for the prices of sawnwood to rise or fall relative to other prices, and in most countries there is little reason to believe that this has had an important bearing upon sawnwood use over the period covered here.⁴ On the other hand, prices of some of the more important competing materials, in particular the wood-based panels have fallen in some countries, improving their competitive position.

⁴ It should be noted, however, that in both North America and Europe there was an earlier long-term rise in the real price of sawnwood, which had an impact on its consumption.

Perhaps even more important than price advantage has been the labor-saving and technological advantages of the substitute materials. Because of its properties, sawnwood has proved less adaptable to the process of mechanization than the uniform, homogeneous panel materials, plastics and metals which have been displacing it. As labor wages rise, these more easily handled materials have an increasing " placed in use " cost advantage. The fact that sawnwood is inflammable, and subject to rot and to termite and insect damage, also tells against it in competition with nonwood alternative materials.

Changes in the nature and technology of the sectors traditionally using sawnwood have also tended to be in a direction which has diminished or eliminated the activities or products for which sawnwood was used. For example, a major use of sawnwood in construction has been as formwork for concrete cast in situ. Now industrialized building systems, involving dry assembling of prefabricated components, do away with the need for site formwork of any description. Similarly, steel arch supports have advantages in mechanized coal mining; concrete railway sleepers are preferred in some countries for lines carrying the present heavier trains; and it proved very difficult to design sawnwood containers that could be used for automatic machine packaging of goods, and new forms of transportation and goods handling, using pallet loads, have reduced the extent to which goods must be protected (the advantage of sawnwood for packaging was the completeness of protection it afforded).

It will be noted that many of these changes reflect the pressures to mechanize brought about by rising labor costs. It follows that the pressures upon sawnwood are most acute in those economies, and those sectors of the economy, where labor costs are high. There remain very many areas where sawnwood is not at a disadvantage, and many uses where wood in sawn form continues to possess characteristics which ensure its continued use, and which even extend its use. Also the very processes of technological and organizational advance which have cut so heavily into the use of sawnwood have in some cases extended its range of applications.

TABLE II-8. - PRICES OF CONIFEROUS SAWNWOOD AND COMPETING MATERIALS, AND GENERAL ECONOMIC INDICATORS, IN SELECTED COUNTRIES

SOURCE: FAO/ECE. Timber Bulletin for Europe (various issues). Geneva..

For example, glued laminated arches and roof-supporting trusses have found widespread use where wide uninterrupted lightweight spans are required. Its aesthetic appearance and pleasing texture to the touch have extended the use of sawnwood, for example, as a luxury flooring and paneling. Mechanization and standardization in much of the construction industry have often enhanced the position of wooden joinery: in many countries factory production has enabled wooden doors,⁵ windows, built-in cupboard components, etc., to be produced at a competitive cost. The shift to new systems of goods handling and transporting based upon pallet loads has opened up a major new use for sawnwood. In the United States alone the annual use of sawnwood for pallets grew from about 470,000 cubic meters in 1948 to more than 4 million cubic meters in 1962.

⁵ It should be noted that much of the wood in factory-made joinery comprises plywood, particle board, etc., on a sawnwood frame. The sawnwood content of wooden doors has thus been sharply reduced in recent years.

Generally, however, sawnwood has suffered in applications where standard shapes or sizes are at a premium, as is the case in most mechanized operations. But it has a flexibility in use which enhances its value in certain uses where irregular forms are involved, or where repetition involves constant changes. For instance, for the wide range of shapes and forms involved in constructing concrete bridges and dams, lowcast rough sawnwood formwork is generally more suitable than steel or plywood formwork panels. Similarly, sawnwood remains unchallenged as a strong, cheap form of packaging for heavy, irregularly shaped machinery.

Where capital and skills are scarce and labor costs are low, sawnwood remains a material of great importance: under these conditions it usually has a cost in use advantage. It can be worked by hand, with simple tools and skills. It is readily produced on a small scale from locally available materials and with little need of capital, equipment or technical expertise. It is therefore often available more cheaply than alternative materials which either have to be imported or produced relatively expensively. Over very large parts of the world sawnwood consequently remains the most suitable material for much activity. Much construction is simple and small-scale, of a type for which sawnwood can serve structurally, as well as for joinery, finishing, fittings and furniture. Where handling facilities and skills are simple or lacking, there is again a greater need for the complete protection afforded by sawnwood containers.

Prospects for the period up to 1975

The pressures to economize in and rationalize the use of sawnwood, and, as labor costs rise, to substitute other materials of lower cost of use, have naturally been most felt in the developed countries, in particular in those countries where sawnwood is extensively used structurally - North America, Scandinavia, the U.S.S.R., Australasia. In these countries use of sawnwood per caput is two or three times as high as in European countries where it is not used structurally. Japan lies midway between the two groups in terms of usage.

With the notable exception of the U.S.S.R., the decline in usage has in the recent past been most abrupt in the first, high-use, group of countries. The scope for further reduction appears to be considerable, and in general it is expected that the decline in use will continue. In the United States, however, it is foreseen that substitution of other materials for sawnwood will proceed at a slower pace in the future.⁶

⁶ Timber trends in the United States, p. 43.

In the U.S.S.R., in contrast to North America and northern Europe, use of sawnwood per caput continued to rise through most of the 1950s, due partly to the very fast growth in economic activity in the country and partly to the continued heavy use of sawnwood in most applications. (consumption has leveled off since 1959 and, with alternative materials now becoming available in rapidly increasing quantities, a steady shift away from sawnwood of the sort that has been taking place in Europe and North America is to be expected. Total consumption will be growing much more slowly in the future than in the recent past, and consumption per caput will probably continue its present decline.

TABLE II-9. - ESTIMATED AVERAGE REQUIREMENT OF SAWNWOOD PER NEW DWELLING IN NORTH AMERICA AND EUROPE, 1950-75

	1950	1960	1975
	m³
UNITED STATES	123,6	220,6	18,3
EUROPE
Northern countries	22,8	16,7	12,3
Northwestern countries	8,4	6,8	6,0
Mediterranean countries	6,1	3,7	3,4
Eastern countries	9,7	6,0	3,8
Total Europe	9,1	6,4	5,0

SOURCES: United Nations/FAO. European timber trends and prospects: a new appraisal, 1950-1975. New York, 1964. U. S. Forest Service. Timber trends in the United States. Washington, D.C., 1965. Forest Resource Report No. 17.

¹ 1952. - ² 1962.

The exceptionally fast growth in consumption in Japan to date has also been very largely a reflection of rapid economic growth. The widespread substitution of other materials for sawnwood now being felt in the country is likely to reduce substantially the rate at which sawnwood use grows in response to future economic growth.

In continental Europe, despite its more limited level of use per head, sawnwood lost ground sharply in the recent past: for instance, use per dwelling fell by a quarter during the course of the 1950s (Table II-9). A continuation of the trends of that period is foreseen, giving rise to a further decline in the overall intensity with which sawnwood is used. The shift away from sawnwood is likely to be particularly rapid in eastern Europe where this trend is being actively encouraged as part of a planned effort to economize and rationalize the overall use of a limited supply of wood raw material.

In the developed countries as a whole the process: of adapting sawnwood use to the shifts in requirements which have accompanied a greater degree of mechanization in their economies is consequently expected to continue and in some countries to expand in the period to 1975. But two points need emphasizing here. Firstly, in the countries where the process has been under way longest much of the rational displacement of sawnwood has already taken place; where this is so the potential for further shifts away from sawnwood is consequently more limited. Secondly, even during this present period the total quantities of sawnwood used are still growing in most countries, if slowly. Sawnwood remains a material of the first importance, required in very large quantities.

In the developing countries, as was indicated earlier, sawnwood occupies a more competitive position. But consumption has often not been growing rapidly in these countries in the recent past. In fact, the statistics available indicate that recently per caput consumption has sometimes even declined. As the statistics are based only upon recorded production and trade and are often not very reliable for the earlier years covered, some question must exist as to whether they adequately reflect the movement in total consumption. It is possible, for example, that the unrecorded share was more buoyant.⁷ But as a rule it is likely that the picture painted in Table II-3 is broadly correct. There are a number of reasons why this is so.

⁷ Detailed data available from eastern Africa suggests that there was probably a considerable growth in rural consumption of sawnwood during the latter part of the fifties, that most of this was drawn from unrecorded supplies, and that this rural use may well have continued to grow at times when urban use, i.e., of recorded supplies, was stagnant or declining.

In the first place, sawnwood is not always a cheap, freely available material. Over much of the dry woodland areas of Africa, the Near East, south Asia and China (Mainland) it is not: quite the reverse, it is scarce and costly. Secondly, the growth in economic activity in many of these countries has been slow, and may not have raised the level of activity in the sectors which use sawnwood. The base period of 1960-62 was, for instance, one of reduced construction activity in some parts of tropical Africa, and disturbances in southeast Asia in recent years have depressed economic activity in some countries in that area. Thirdly, a very large share of consumption in some countries may be concentrated in particular industrial use sectors which are subjected to the same pressures as are observed in the developed countries. For example, in a number of countries, notably in northern Africa and the Near East, fruit packaging is by far the largest single use of sawnwood. But sawnwood boxes are being replaced with wire-bound slat boxes, and this significantly depresses the rate of growth in their total use of sawnwood - and will do so to an even greater extent in the future.

For many countries and regions a combination of these factors must be at work. But they still do not satisfactorily explain the full measure of the decline in the intensity with which sawnwood is used. In Latin America, for instance, where sawnwood should be freely and competitively available and where it has been used relatively abundantly, it is difficult to account for the failure of consumption to grow in recent years. There is reason to believe that sawnwood is often not being used even in the applications for which it is suited and for which it is the most rational material. Because of failure to develop adequately local producing and marketing capacity in order to make available sawnwood of appropriate qualities, sizes, or quantities, it is being replaced prematurely by other materials - prematurely in the sense that these materials are more costly and less rational.⁸

⁸ They often have to be imported, or the capital equipment for their manufacture has to be imported, at a time when the raw material for sawnwood is abundantly available domestically.

TABLE II-10. - GROWTH IN ESTIMATED TOTAL CONSUMPTION OF SAWNWOOD, 1960-62 TO 1975¹

	Consumption			Consumption per 1 000 capita
	1960-62	1975	Index	1960-62	1975	Index
	Million m³		1961 = 100	m³		1961 = 100
Europe	78,31	87,30	111	173	172	99
U.S.S.R.	99,72	111,00	111	457	426	93
North America	94,37	107,90	114	467	436	93
Latin America	12,39	24,70	199	58	77	133
Africa	4,05	7,50	185	15	19	130
Asia-Pacific	57,33	88,90	155	34	41	119
WORLD TOTAL	346,17	427,30	123	114	109	96

¹ See also Annex Table II-B.

Requirements in 1975

It is estimated that, given the economic, demographic and other assumptions postulated in this study, the world will require about 430 million cubic meters of sawnwood in 1975 - an increase of more than a quarter above consumption in 1961. As is shown in Table II-10, and Annex Table II-B, consumption per caput is likely to be lower in many developed areas by 1975, but the effect of substantially increased economic activity and population is likely to raise their aggregate annual consumption of sawnwood, usually by about 10 to 15 percent.

Overall annual use in most areas on the other hand is expected to rise by some 50 to 100 percent, reflecting the general rise in intensity of use anticipated in these regions. A large share of the world's additional requirements of sawnwood in the period to 1975 - probably in excess of one third of the world aggregate - is consequently likely to originate in the developing regions, underlining the importance of the potential, and challenge, facing the sawmilling industries in these countries.

Wood-based panels

Geographical pattern for wood-based panel use
End uses of wood-based panels
Factors affecting the use of wood-based panel products
Prospects for the period up to 1975
Requirements in 1975

There are three main types of wood-based panel material -plywood, fibreboard and particle board. Blockboard is included with plywood and veneer is also usually considered in conjunction with plywood. Fibreboard also comprises two separate products: compressed (hardboard) and noncompressed (insulation board). With the exception of veneer, which is usually used as a surfacing material for other panels, all of these products are to some degree interchangeable one with another. It is therefore necessary to consider them together.

Consumption of these products both as a group and separately has been growing faster than consumption of any other wood product group. In aggregate world consumption rose from 12.49 million cubic meters in 1951 to 19.49 million in 1956, a growth of 56 percent, and then increased a further 55 percent in the subsequent five years to reach 30.22 million in 1961. By 1963 consumption had reached 37.13 million cubic meters (see Table II-11).⁹

⁹ The different panel products are reported in different units of measurement - area, volume or weight. It is therefore difficult to compare and aggregate them. Surface area is usually the dimension in which they compete with one another, but gives no indication of raw material content; weight comparisons are distorted by the different densities; volume by different thickness. Thus the use of volume here is likely to exaggerate the growth in the aggregate of panel products, because of the faster than average growth of the thick products - particle board, softwood plywood and blockboard. (This is partially offset by the slow growth in use of insulation board.)

In part this remarkable growth was due to the explosive emergence of a new product upon the scene during this period - particle board. But growth in use of the other products was also very rapid (see Table II-1.2) Plywood had been a long established material, but its use had grown only slowly until the period after the second world war. Between 1951 and 1961 annual consumption of plywood increased two and a half times to 16.84 million cubic meters, and by 1963 had grown to 20.14 million cubic meters. Fibreboard also has a lengthy history of use, but world consumption amounted to only 840,000 metric tons a year prior to the second world war, and to 1.3 million metric tons in the postwar period. During the decade 1951-61, consumption of fibreboard more than doubled to 4.54 million metric tons a year, rising by 1963 to 5.31 million.

TABLE II-11. - GROWTH IN RECORDED CONSUMPTION OF WOOD-BASED PANEL PRODUCTS,¹ 1950-52 TO 1963

	1950-52	1955-57	1960-62	1963	Change
					1951-56	1956-61
TOTAL CONSUMPTION
	Million m³				1951 = 100	1956 = 100²
Europe	2,84	4,62	8,30	10.70	163	180
U.S.S.R.	0,77	1,22	2,24	2,74	159	184
North America	8,01	11,84	16,23	19,51	148	137
Latin America	0,16	0,31	0,55	0,62	190	190
Africa	0,08	0,20	0,22	0,23	260	107
Asia-Pacific	0,63	1,30	2,68	3,32	205	206
WORLD TOTAL	12,49	19,49	30,22	37,13	156	155
CONSUMPTION PER THOUSAND CAPITA	m3
Europe	6,8	10,7	18,3	23,1	157	171
U.S.S.R	4,2	6,1	10,3	12,2	146	168
North America	47,4	64,0	80,3	93,7	135	126
Latin America	1,0	1,7	2,6	2,7	167	156
Africa	0,4	0,9	0,8	0,8	235	192
Asia-Pacific	0,5	0,9	1,6	1,9	185	189
WORLD TOTAL	5,0	7,1	10,0	11,8	143	141

¹ Excluding veneers. - ² See also Annex Table II-C.

TABLE. - GROWTH IN RECORDED CONSUMPTION OF PLYWOOD, FIBREBOARD AND PARTICLE BOARD, 1950-52 TO 1963

	Consumption				Change
	1950-52	1955-57	1960-62	1963	1951-56	1956-61
PLYWOOD	Million m³				1951 = 100	1956 = 100
Europe	1,52	2,10	3,02	3,53	199	144
U.S.S.R.	0,72	1,04	1,32	1,45	185	127
North America	3,99	6,88	10,16	12,31	255	148
Latin America	0,13	0,22	0,33	0,34	257	150
Africa	0,05	0,074	0,12	0,12	239	158
Asia-Pacific	0,40	0,94	1,88	2,39	468	201
WORLD TOTAL	6,81	11,26	16,84	20,14	247	150
FIBREBOARD	Million MT
Europe	0,68	1,17	1,74	2,05	256	149
U.S.S.R.	0,024	0,071	0,27	0,35	1100	379
North America	1,30	1,70	1,98	2,28	153	116
Latin America	0,034	0,058	0,12	0,14	346	204
Africa	0,019	0,065	0,054	0,067	282	83
Asia-Pacific	0,12	0,20	0,38	0,42	333	188
WORLD TOTAL	2,17	3,27	4,54	5,31	210	139
PARTICLE BOARD	Million MT
Europe	0,027	0,37	1,57	2,49	5800	430
U.S.S.R	..	..	0,17	0,28	..	..
North America	0,012	0,17	0,42	0,62	3500	250
Latin America	..	0,007	0,025	0,039	..	364
Africa	..	0,012	0,007	0,002	..	58
Asia-Pacific	..	0,013	0,096	0,013	..	731
WORLD TOTAL	0,039	0,57	2,30	3,56	5900	404

Particle board first appeared on the market about the end of the second world war. In 1951, world consumption amounted to 39,000 metric tons, by 1956 it had grown to 568,000 metric tons, and by 1961 to 2.30 million metric tons - a rate of growth over the quinquennium equivalent to a doubling of world consumption every three years. This spectacular rate of increase slackened only slightly in the ensuing biennium, consumption in 1963 being 3.56 million metric tons.

In the recent past, and in sharp contrast to use of sawnwood, use of these products has consequently been growing much faster than economic activity. Panel products are being used in a constantly widening range of applications and in growing intensity in many of the markets which they have entered.

Geographical pattern for wood-based panel use

As is shown in Annex Table II-C, the consumption of wood-based panel products is narrowly concentrated in a few countries. Fifty-four percent of all plywood is consumed in the United States; Canada, Japan, the U.S.S.R., the United Kingdom, Ireland and the EEC countries together account for a further 30 percent. Africa (excluding southern Africa), Asia (excluding Japan) and Latin America together consume only 4 percent of the plywood used in the world. For fibreboard the shares accounted for by the United States, the other six developed areas listed, and by Africa-Asia-Latin America are respectively about 40, 33 and 5 percent. As for particle board only 16 percent is consumed in the United States, but 68 percent is used in Europe (two thirds of it in the EEC region), and 7 percent in the U.S.S.R. Although use is concentrated in the developed countries the intensity with which each of these panel products is used thus varies quite widely from country to country: a heavy use of one product is not necessarily accompanied by heavy use of the others.

In Annex Table II-A consumption is shown on a per thousand capita basis and within income classes (as expressed by (GDP) per caput). A positive relationship between consumption and income is to be seen, but also very wide variations in consumption at a particular income level, indicating that there are important nonincome factors at work.

End uses of wood-based panels

Wood-based panel products are used for many of the purposes as sawnwood - for formwork, sheathing, joinery, fittings and finishings in construction; for the manufacture of furniture; and for packaging. Other lesser but important uses, as for sawnwood, are vehicle and ship building. Indeed, as was indicated earlier, much of the growth in use of the panel products has been at the expense of sawnwood: they are used as substitutes for the latter. Because substitution has proceeded much further in some sectors and countries than in others, and because, the panel products being in part interchangeable one with another, the choice of one rather than another for a given use can vary from place to place, the pattern of use is not clearly or uniformly defined.

Table II-13 shows the end-use pattern for wood-based panels used in the United States. By far the greater part of the plywood used in that country is consumed in construction. But three quarters of United States plywood is thick softwood plywood, a commodity found in few countries outside North America. In Europe, where most plywood is hardwood plywood, furniture is probably the most important end use, followed closely by joinery (notably for doors). In a number of tropical countries, such as India, Ceylon, China (Taiwan), Kenya, and Uganda, the packaging of tea exports in plywood tea chests has become a very important, and often the largest, end use of plywood.

Fibreboard is most commonly used in construction. Softboard (insulation board) is used largely as sheathing and interior finishing for temperature and sound insulation. Hardboard is widely used as exterior siding, subflooring, wall surfacing, door facing and concrete formwork. It is also much used in the furniture and other woodworking industries.

Particle board use has so far usually been concentrated in the manufacture of furniture, as is shown by Table II-14, though now its use is being rapidly extended into the construction field, where its applications are much the same as fibreboard and plywood - in particular those of blockboard and thick softwood plywood.

TABLE II-13. - PATTERN OF WOOD-BASED PANEL PRODUCTS USE IN THE UNITED STATES IN 1962

	Plywood and veneer	Fibreboard and particle board
Construction	Percentage
Residential	35.0	41.0
Nonresidential	23.0	24.0
Upkeep and improvements	12.5	15.0
Farming and railroads	2.0	-
Total construction	72.5	80.0
Manufactured products ¹	15.5	15.0
Packaging	10.0	..
Other	2.0	5.0
TOTAL	100.0	100.0
Million cubic meters	10.64	4.82

SOURCE: U. S. Forest Service. Timber trends in the United States. Washington, D.C., 1965. Forest Resource Report No. 17.

¹ Includes furniture.

TABLE II-14. - PATTERN OF USE OF PARTICLE BOARD IN SELECTED COUNTRIES IN EUROPE IN 1959-61

SOURCE: United Nations/FAO. European timber trends and prospects: a new appraisal, 1950-1975. New York, 1904.

¹ Breakdown not known.

Factors affecting the use of wood-based panel products

Attention has already been drawn to the relationship between per caput consumption of wood-based panel products and per caput income - and to the wide variations that occur within the framework of this relationship. Three principal nonincome factors can be isolated as being of importance in any given country or sector: the level of prior sawnwood use, the prices and trend in prices of the panel products relative to sawnwood prices (and to prices of other panel products such as asbestos sheet and plastic), and the forest resource and forest industry status.

The principal feature of wood-based panel products use is their substitution for sawnwood. As was indicated in the earlier section on sawnwood, this comes about partly because of a trend in prices which increasingly favors the panel products, and partly because they have properties which in a variety of ways are proving to be more desirable than those of sawnwood in meeting the changing needs of the user industries and sectors.

There is little in the way of price series for panel products to compare with the sawnwood series set out in Table II-8. But the series in Table II-15 for the United Kingdom illustrate a common situation, an absolute decline in plywood and fibreboard prices over a period when sawnwood prices either rose or stayed roughly unchanged. (It should be noted that in the United Kingdom consumption of fibreboard, the product apparently most favored by these differential price shifts, did not rise as much as did consumption of particle board and plywood.)

Probably more important are the advantages attaching to the properties of the wood-based panel products. As a group they have the following characteristics in common which favor them over sawnwood: dimensional stability, uniformity of quality and workability, often better strength to weight properties, the width of surface area and the ease with which surface finishes can be " built in " or applied to them; in addition, they can be easily and simply used and installed with little use of labor. All this adds up to their low cost placed in use, and the ease with which they can be adopted by, and adapted to, the ever-widening range of mechanized processes and stages which are transforming the sectors which use wood. The fact that they are produced in highly mechanized industries, requiring little labor per unit of output, goes far to explain their price advantage over sawnwood - itself a product of a labor-intensive industry - in countries experiencing sharply rising labor costs.

It follows that, if growth in use is so largely a function of substitution for sawnwood, the level of use of wood-based panel products must be closely related to the prior use of sawnwood. Reference to Annex Table II-A shows that it is in fact the countries with a high use of sawnwood which at present have the highest per caput use of wood-based panel products.

The level of consumption also tends to reflect the forest resource and forest industry situation, as the use of one product rather than another in a country is strongly influenced by the supply situation. The heavy use of softwood plywood in the United States, fibreboard in Scandinavia, and of particle board in the Federal Republic of Germany in each case accompanies the existence of a large domestic production of these respective products. (The extent to which raw material procurement affects the location and size of these industries is discussed in Chapter IV.)

TABLE II-15. - UNITED KINGDOM IMPORT PRICES FOR SELECTED WOOD PRODUCTS

	Unit	1950	1951	1956	1960	1961
		Average unit price c.i.f. - U.S. $
Coniferous sawnwood	m³	33	52	51	46	47
Broadleaved sawnwood.	m³	54	73	82	82	87
Plywood	m³	117	158	144	134	136
Fibreboard	MT	122	146	114	109	104
Particle board	MT	..	..	..	114	129

SOURCE: FAO. Plywood and other wood-based panel products. Rome, 1965.

Prospects for the period up to 1975

The extraordinary upsurge everywhere in the recent past in the use of wood-based panels makes the process of predicting the further evolution of consumption very difficult. A recent analysis¹⁰ of aggregate per caput consumption of wood-based panels over the period 1950 to 1961 for such countries as the necessary data was available gave little evidence, even in the high-income high-use countries, of any slowing down in the rate of increase. For the great bulk of the heavy consuming countries the apparent income elasticity remained relatively stable throughout the period. The rate of increase varied widely from country to country - reflecting the differences in circumstances discussed above - but in most countries it remained stable.

¹⁰ FAO. Plywood and other wood -based panels. Rome, 1965.

As is shown by the apparent income elasticities set out below, the rates of increase for some of the more important consuming countries were very high during this period:

Austria	2.9
Netherlands	3.1
Germany, Fed. Rep. Of	3.3
France	3.8
United Kingdom	4.8

There is good reason to believe, therefore, that the demand for wood-based panels is still in its expansionary stage; but it cannot expand at such high rates indefinitely. The fact that the growth in use of wood-based panel products has to date been largely at the expense of sawnwood must in itself necessarily limit this growth. After a certain stage, the relative importance of substitution on the growth in consumption of these products must decline. Furthermore, since 1951 there has been a widespread decline in the absolute market price of wood-based panel products. As has been pointed out, this decline has been even sharper relative to prices generally and to the price of sawnwood. The decline in absolute price again cannot continue indefinitely; the advantages the panel products have enjoyed from a widening price differential in the past must diminish in time.

Thirdly, much of the impetus to the growth in aggregate use of panel products since 1950 came from the explosive emergence of an entirely new product, particle board. An indefinite continuation of the past rate of growth could only be expected if one or more further new products were to enter the market in the future. At the time of writing, there is little if any evidence of such a product appearing before 1975: but it cannot be entirely ruled out as a possibility. It must also be borne in mind that the wood-based panel products compete with other nonwood materials, such as asbestos sheet. The emergence of a new or improved product of this sort could severely affect and limit future growth of the wood-based panels.

The forward estimates to 1975 consequently recognize that these factors are likely to slow down the rate of growth in consumption. In seeking to determine by what margin growth might slow down, some indication of what is likely to occur is to be found by considering what is happening to the individual panel products. The discussion above concerns the growth in consumption of wood-based panel products in aggregate, but not all these products are following the same path. The rate of growth in per caput consumption of fibreboard, for example, has slowed down nearly everywhere. This is principally due to insulation board: in the high-use countries such as Canada, Sweden and the United States, per caput consumption of this material has not grown at all since the early 1950s. Consumption of hardboard on the other hand continues to grow vigorously but often at a progressively slower rate. There is also a distinction within the plywood group: there is evidence that the growth in per caput consumption of thin hardwood plywood is slowing down, but use of blockboard and thick softwood plywood continues to grow vigorously. Particle board consumption remains the fastest growing of any panel product, and it is noticeable that it is the thick rigid panels - particle board, blockboard and softwood plywood which offer the most direct competition to sawnwood, which are growing the more vigorously.

The estimates to 1975, shown in Table II-16 and Annex Table II-C assume for the developed market economy countries a quite appreciable slowing down in growth in consumption by that year. Nevertheless, growth will still be very rapid - with apparent income elasticities in 1975 still well above unity in most subregions - and this will involve very large increases in the quantities involved. By 1975, annual consumption is expected to be one and two third times as much as in 1961 in North America and two and a half times as great in western Europe. ¹¹

¹¹ Europe, loss the countries of eastern Europe.

TABLE II-16. - ESTIMATED GROWTH IN TOTAL CONSUMPTION OF WOOD-BASED PANEL PRODUCTS,¹ 1960-62 TO 1975

	Consumption			Consumption per 1 000 capita
	1960-62	1975	Index	1960-62	1975	Index
	Million m³		1961 = 100	m³		1961 = 100
Europe	8,41	22,60	269	19	44	239
U.S.S.R.	2,24	14,40	642	10	55	536
North America	16,25	26,00	160	80	105	131
Latin America	0,52	1,90	356	2,4	6	242
Africa	0,37	1,10	300	1,3	3	215
Asia-Pacific	2,75	9,80	359	1,7	4,5	269
WORLD TOTAL	30,53	75,80	248	10	19	192

¹ Excluding veneers. - ² see also Annex Table II-C.

In the centrally-planned economies of eastern Europe and the U.S.S.R., an even higher increase is expected. In these countries it is planned actively to encourage the trend toward replacing sawnwood with wood-based panel products experienced earlier in the developed market economies. Plans therefore call for rapid and massive increases in their present low per caput consumption of panel products.

In the developing countries, a number of different elements bear upon the likely growth in panel consumption. Attention has already been drawn several times in the course of this chapter to the better competitive position enjoyed by sawnwood in countries where it is available cheaply, and where labor costs are low. Wood-based panel products are consequently less likely to be adopted rapidly and on a large scale as in the high-cost countries. But where sawnwood is not available cheaply they are likely to become an important material (moreover particle board, for example, can be manufactured locally from low-grade small-sized material incapable of providing sawnwood). Also the unsatisfactory nature of the sawnwood in many areas - poorly sawn, inadequately seasoned and treated, irregular supplies, etc. is likely to encourage the use of panels, with their uniform quality, even at early stages of development. It should be noted that panels can also be worked with simple hand tools and skills, and are easy to apply. Panels can also be produced with qualities waterproof, termiteproof, even flameproof - seldom possessed by sawnwood at a competitive cost, which are of great importance in tropical countries. Wood-based panels may therefore be adopted for uses, such as low-cost housing, in which sawnwood has not traditionally been employed in these regions.

A rapid growth in consumption of wood-based panel products is consequently foreseen for many of the developing countries. But, as these countries have not previously used large quantities of sawnwood, it is unlikely that this growth will often be as fast as the spectacular substitution-based expansion in the developed countries.

TABLE II-17. - ESTIMATED TOTAL CONSUMPTION OF PLYWOOD, FIBREBOARD. PARTICLE BOARD AND VENEER TN 1975

¹ Excluding sliced and peeled wood used for packaging.

Requirements in 1975

It is estimated that in aggregate the world will require some 76 million cubic meters¹² of wood-based panels in 1975 - about two and half times as much as was consumed in 1961. As has been noted above and as is shown in Table II-16 and Annex Table II-C, consumption of panels is likely to be growing fast in both developed and developing countries. Particularly large and fast rates of growth in use are foreseen for the U.S.S.R.

¹² Excluding veneers, which are principally used to surface other materials (some veneer is also used for packaging, and some for the manufacture of matches). Little is known about the likely magnitude of future use of veneers: such estimates as are available are shown in Table II-17.

Of the products, particle board is expected to show the most rapid increase - consumption growing by perhaps as much as sixfold to some 14 million metric tons in 1975, the major quantitative increases being in the U.S.S.R., Europe and North America (Table II-17). Plywood consumption is expected to more than double, to about 35 million cubic meters, with again a further huge increase in North American consumption, despite the present high level of use in that region. Fibreboard consumption should grow to almost two and a half times the 1961 level to about 11 million tons in 1975, with a particularly marked growth in consumption in the U.S.S.R.

Plywood is likely to be still the most widely used of the wood-based panel products in 1975 - probably accounting for about half of the aggregate volume used - but by that year there will probably be as much particle board consumed as fibreboard.

Wood pulp products

Dissolving pulp
Paper and paperboard
Geographical pattern of paper and paperboard use
End uses of paper and paperboard
Factors affecting the use of paper and paperboard
Prospects for the period up to 1975
Requirements in 1975

All but a small fraction of the wood pulp used in the world goes to the making of paper and paperboard.¹³ The rest is a quantity of dissolving pulp. As dissolving pulp accounted for only 4 percent of total wood pulp used in North America in 1961, 5 percent in the U.S.S.R., 8.5 percent in Europe, and 10 percent in Japan, this present section will be principally devoted to the paper and paperboard uses.¹⁴

¹³ Considerable quantities of waste paper and of nonwood fibers are also used in the manufacture of paper and paperboard (see Chapter IV).

¹⁴ Fibreboard is also made from wood pulp, but is excluded here as it has been dealt with in the preceding section.

Dissolving pulp

Table II-18 shows the estimated total consumption of dissolving wood pulp in the world, 1955-57 to 1975.

The most important use of dissolving pulp is in the manufacture of rayon, other uses being for cellophane and a variety of films, plastics, explosives, solvents, varnishes and other chemical products. The future of dissolving pulp is consequently very largely linked to that of the use of rayon, which is principally used in textiles and tire cord. In both uses it is subject to some displacement by newer synthetics -as well as from natural fibers such as cotton which it replaced. Consumption is expected to grow only slowly in the present high-use market economy countries, but to grow somewhat faster in the U.S.S.R. and in eastern Europe. In developing countries where there are no chemical industries producing the newer synthetics, demand for rayon is likely to be more dynamic, so that in some parts of the world a substantial growth in use can be anticipated. Nevertheless, while the importance of this must not be overlooked, the slow growth in use in the countries which consume the bulk of the world's dissolving pulp is likely to mean that by 1975 it will form an even smaller part of the wood pulp aggregate than the 5 to 6 percent share it made up in 1961.¹⁵

¹⁵ It should be noted that dissolving pulp is also made from raw materials other than wood. Unless stated otherwise historical figures reproduced in this study refer only to dissolving wood pulp.

TABLE II-18. - ESTIMATED CONSUMPTION OF DISSOLVING WOOD PULP, 1955-57 TO 1975 ¹

	1955-57	1960-62	1975
	1 000 MT
Europe	1 380	1 612	2 180
U.S.S.R.	186	187	1 100
North America	937	1 092	1 290
Latin America	55	64	90
Africa	24	31	..
Asia-Pacific	505	662	..
WORLD TOTAL	3 087	3 648	5 800

¹ See also Annex Table II-D.

TABLE II-19. - GROWTH IN RECORDED CONSUMPTION OF PAPER AND PAPERBOARD 1950-52 TO 1963

	1950-52	1955-57	1960-62	1963	Change		Aver. Annual rate of growth
					1951-56	1956-61	1951-61
TOTAL CONSUMPTION	Million MT				1961=100	1951 = 100	Percent
Europe	10,99	16,24	22,87	25,36	148	141	7,6
U.S.S.R.	1,63	2,64	3,47	3,87	162	131	7,9
North America	27,28	32,73	37,37	39,37	120	114	3,2
Latin America	1,44	1,95	2,63	2,77	136	135	6,2
Africa	0,38	0,58	0,82	0,89	152	152	8,0
Asia-Pacific	2,62	5,28	10,17	11,79	202	193	14,5
WOWED TOTAL	44,33	59,42	77,33	84,05	134	130	5,7
CONSUMPTION PEP. THOUSAND CAPITA	MT
Europe	26	38	51	55	143	134	6,7
U.S.S.R.	9	13	16	17	150	120	6,1
North America	161	177	185	189	110	105	1,4
Latin America	8,6	10,3	12,4	12,2	119	119	23,5
Africa	1,8	2,5	3,2	3,2	138	118	5,0
Asia-Pacific	1,9	3,5	6,1	6,8	183	177	12,4
WORLD TOTAL	18	22	26	27	123	119	3,9

Paper and paperboard

The world's total consumption of paper and paperboard, which is shown in Table II-19, rose from 44.33 million metric tons in 1951 to 59.42 million in 1956 to 77.34 million in 1961 - a growth of about 34 percent in the first five years and of 30 percent in the second: an average annual rate of growth of 5.7 percent through the decade. Growth was a little slower through the following biennium, consumption in 1963 reaching 84.05 million metric tons.

The statistics available permit a breakdown to be made between cultural and industrial papers, and for the cultural group to be divided into newsprint and other printing and writing papers. The growth of each of these three subdivisions is shown separately in Table II-20.

The world's consumption of newsprint grew from 9.09 million metric tons in 1951 to 11.92 million in 1956 to 14.50 million in 1961: an average rate of growth over the decade of 4.8 percent - somewhat slower than the growth in aggregate use of paper and paperboard. Consumption of other printing writing paper grew rather faster, from 7.97 to 14.08 million metric tons - an average annual growth of 5.9 percent.

In aggregate, world consumption of cultural papers grew by about 65 percent over the decade. This compared with a growth of about 80 percent in the world consumption of industrial papers and paperboards? which rose from 27.27 million metric tons in 1951 to 37.67 million in 1956 and 48.75 million in 1961. Use of the industrial group was therefore growing appreciably faster, and by 1961 industrial paper and paperboard accounted for 63 percent of all paper and paperboard used in the world.

Geographical pattern of paper and paperboard use

As is the case with the other processed wood products, consumption of paper and paperboard is heavily concentrated in just a few countries. In 1961, North America accounted for about a half of the world's consumption, and Europe for another three tenths. Africa (excluding southern Africa), Asia (excluding Japan) and Latin America together consumed only one tenth. This distribution is approximately the same for each of the three categories of paper and paperboard (Annex Table II-D).

TABLE. II-20 GROWTH IN RECORDED CONSUMPTION ON PAPER AND PAPERBOARD BY CATEGORY 1950-52 TO 1963

	1950-52	1955-57	1960-62	1963	Change		Aver. annual rate of growth
					1951-56	1956-61	1951-61
NEWSPRINT	Million MT				1951= 100	1956=100	Percent
Europe	2.03	3.15	4.16	4.29	156	132	7.4
U.S.S.R.	0.22	0.32	0.43	0.52	147	134	7.1
North America	5.73	6.55	7.12	6.63	114	109	2.2
Latin America	0.42	0.55	0.73	0.70	132	133	5.7
Africa	0.08	0.12	0.17	0.17	146	140	7.4
Asia-Pacific	0.61	1.23	1.89	2.10	201	153	11.9
WORLD TOTAL	9.09	11.92	14.50	14.31	131	122	4.8
OTHER POINTING AND WRITING PAPER
Europe	2.37	3.39	4.79	5.46	143	141	7.3
U.S.S.R.	0.34	0.61	0.73	0.80	176	120	7.8
North America	4.40	5.33	6.36	7.14	121	119	3.7
Latin America	0.25	0.37	0.41	0.39	146	112	5.1
Africa	0.06	0.12	0.18	0.19	201	157	12.2
Asia-Pacific	0.55	1.01	1.61	1.89	185	159	11.4
WOWED TOTAL	7.97	10.82	14.08	15.87	136	130	5.9
INDUSTRIAL PAPER AND PAPERBOARD
Europe	6.60	9.69	13.92	15.60	147	144	7.8
U.S.S.R.	1.07	1.72	2.32	2.55	161	135	8.1
North America	17.14	20.86	23.89	25.70	122	115	3.4
Latin America	0. 77	1.03	1.48	1.68	134	144	6.8
Africa	0.24	0.34	0.47	0.53	142	137	6.9
Asia-Pacific	1.46	3.03	6.67	7.81	208	220	16.4
WORLD TOTAL	27.27	36.67	48.75	53.88	134	133	6.0

End uses of paper and paperboard

Paper and paperboard enter into a host of different uses, but most of these fall into two categories: printing and writing, and packaging. Within the printing and writing (or cultural) category there is a basic distinction to be made between newsprint and the rest.

Newsprint, which in 1961 made up 18.5 percent of all paper and paperboard utilized, is very largely used in printing newspapers. A small amount goes into such items as handbills or is used as mechanical printing paper. Other printing and writing papers, which made up a further 18 percent of the total in 1961, comprise principally book papers which go into books, magazines, etc., and also into envelopes and various personal and business writing papers; fine papers for writing papers, onionskins, etc.; and coarser papers for catalogues, directories, etc.

Packaging paper and paperboard are a less clearly defined group. It is estimated that this group accounted for 47.5 percent of all paper and paperboard consumed in the United States in 1962 (and 75 percent of all industrial paper and paperboard) and 48 percent (and 81 percent) in Europe in 1960. In these two regions, as is shown in Table II-21, paper and paperboard are easily the most widely used of all packaging materials, and in the recent past have usually maintained, if not improved upon their share of the packaging market. Packaging paper and paperboard are used for paper bags and sacks, for rigid paperboard boxes and other containers, and for flexible board for cartons and lightweight food and drink containers.

The remaining uses of paper and paperboard - amounting in all to some 10 to 15 percent of the total - include tissues, towels, napkins, etc.; roofing felts and other papers for the construction, electrical and other industries; and paperboards for punch cards, file folders and other office and industrial uses.

TABLE II-21. - TRENDS IN THE MAIN PACKAGING MATERIALS PRODUCED IN THE UNITED STATES AND SELECTED EUROPEAN COUNTRIES, 1939 TO 1962 (percentage of selling value)

	Wood	Paper and board	Metal	Glass	Textile	Plastic	Other materials
United States
1939	11.4	37.8	26.2	8.0	5.8	1-	11.8
1947	10.2	46.7	18.9	7.9	6.3	1-	10.0
1954	5.7	47.1	20.9	7.3	2.6	1-	16.6
1958	3.9	47.4	21.8	7.9	1.6	1-	17.4
United Kingdom
1954	9.7	41.2	19.9	9.5	7.1	6.1	6.6
1958	7.8	40.0	23.1	9.2	6.2	7.6	7.1
Germany, Fed. Rep. Of
1954	6.2	50.3	29.5	10.0	2.9	1.1	2
1960	4.7	60.8	26.8	9.6	0.8	8.3	2
Sweden
1950	12.1	74.0	8.4	6.0	0.6	2	2
1956	6.6	79.6	8.9	4.4	0.5	2	2
Austria
1954	6.1	63.3	13.1	10.6	7.6	0.4	2
1959	3.6	66.9	17.6	10.9	3.4	7.6	2
Hungary
1962	23.2	29.6	14.3	13.3	8.8	4.3	6.6

SOURCE: United Nations/FAO: European timber bends and prospects: a new appraisal, 1950-1975. New York, 1964.

¹ No separate figures for plastics; included under "Other " materials." - ² Not shown separately.

Factors affecting the use of paper and paperboard

In Annex Table II-A, consumption of paper and paperboard per caput is shown in relation to per caput income (as expressed by GDP). It is clear from the table that there is a marked positive relationship between the two: per caput consumption of paper and paperboard rises with growth in per caput income, with a degree of uniformity within any given income class which suggests that most other factors affecting the use of paper and paperboard are similarly positively correlated with change in income.

The precise nature of the relationship between per caput income and consumption has been extensively studied in recent years.¹⁶ The relationship apparently is not a uniform one: in fact, income elasticity declines as income rises. At income levels of about $100 per head, the elasticity of consumption is as high as 2.5 to 3; at levels of around $200 to $400, it ranges from about 1.5 to 2.5. At $500 to $1,000, the range found over much of Europe, it is still above unity, but for the United States, with an income per head well over $2,000, it is below unity. Growth in consumption of each of the major categories of paper and paperboard also declines with rising income in this way, but not at a uniform rate. At low income levels, below $150 per head, the income elasticity of consumption of cultural papers is somewhat higher than that for industrial papers. As income grows, the position becomes reversed, and from $800 per head up, the elasticity for industrial papers is much higher than that for cultural papers.

¹⁶ The basic work by FAO. in this field is published in World demand for paper to 1975, FAO. 1960.

Therefore, for a given rate of income growth, consumption of paper and paperboard rises much faster in the developing countries than in the developed But while in developing countries the greater part of the expansion is, initially at least, usually in cultural papers, in developed countries the bulk of growth is accounted for by the industrial papers.

Cultural papers are unusual as a product because of the leek of direct competition from other materials in most of their uses: paper is effectively the only material to be used to print or write on. As income rises, literacy spreads and with it demand for newspapers, journals, books, writing and business papers, etc. But competition arises from other communications media, notably radio and television, and intensifies as advertising becomes more important. To date advertising has not been of importance in countries with centrally-planned economies, but in most market economy countries the continued growth in newsprint use comes to depend more and more on the growth in size of the advertising content of newspapers.

Consumption of newsprint is affected by two components: the circulation and the page area of newspapers. Circulation in such countries as the United States and the United Kingdom has been static for some years or, as is shown in Table II-22, has actually declined. Growth has recently been almost entirely due to a growth in number of pages per copy, a growth generated by the larger page area devoted to advertising. Growth in newsprint consumption is therefore conditioned not only by literacy and income, but also by a saturation level in newspaper consumption, and in the effectiveness of newspapers in competition with other media as a means of advertising. Similar considerations attach to the growth in consumption of magazines and journals.

TABLE II-22. - NEWSPAPER CIRCULATION IN SELECTED COUNTRIES IN 1952, 1957 AND 1962

	1952	1957	1962
	Copies per 1 000 inhabitants
Sweden	490	1462	490
United Kingdom²	615	3573	490
Germany, Fed. Rep. of.	263	1277	306
France	240	1246	4257
Hungary	590	122	157
U.S.S.R.	..	107	4181
United States	353	337	321
Mexico	48	..	115
Chile	79	..	4134
Argentina	100	159	6155
Nigeria	..	7	8
South Africa	57	..	57
Thailand	4	..	711
Philippines	24	119	416
India	8	89	13
Japan	353	400	4416
Australia	416	381	375
China (Mainland)	..	919	..

SOURCE: U.S. Bureau of the Census. Statistical abstracts of the United States. Washington, D.C.

¹ 1955. - ² Including a considerable export of newspapers. - ³ 1954..- ⁴ 1961. - ⁵ 1950. - ⁶ 1959. - ⁷ 1960. - ⁸ 1958. - ⁹ 1955.

The growth in demand for books is also likely to be affected in the upper income reaches by saturation and by competition for use of leisure time. The consumption of writing and other business paper is clearly related to the level of business activity: but also to the emergence and spread of new systems of compiling, recording, transmitting and storing data which do not use paper.

The impact of literacy is most important in the lower income ranges, where a high degree of illiteracy is likely to be found. To the extent that the spread of literacy is a function of increased expenditure on education, it is closely associated with income and usually rises as income grows (though, as with consumption of paper and paperboard, increases in income will have progressively less and less effect as a state of universal literacy is approached), so that growth in the consumption of cultural papers reflects the income-consumption relationship mentioned earlier. However, a concentrated and accelerated effort to improve the level of literacy in a country is likely, during the period in which it is effective, to raise the consumption of cultural papers above the level normally associated with that level of income per head.

As has been noted earlier, the greater part of the industrial papers and paperboards is used in packaging. The growth in their consumption, and the fact that it is sustained more vigorously at higher levels of income than consumption of cultural papers, stems from three main factors. Firstly, there is the greater volume of goods to be packaged as economic activity rises, which stimulates use of all forms of packaging. Secondly, the extent to which goods are packaged increases.

With increasing income there is a progressive tendency to prepack consumer goods which earlier were shipped loose or in bulk, while at the same time packaging acquires a display and advertising function. Both tendencies have been given sharp impetus by the rapid spread in the recent past of the practice of retailing through self-service stores. The third main element explaining the vigorous growth in consumption of packaging paper and paperboard has been the conspicuous success of these products both in meeting these new demands on packaging, and in replacing other materials in established packaging applications. Mention has already been made of the substitution of wooden crates and boxes by disposable paperboard containers which are of lower original cost; are easier to fill and close, often by automatic machinery; are more compact and lighter, resulting in significant savings in transport charges; and have surfaces which can be used to bear attractive advertising. Similar considerations apply to paper bags which have proved to be a cheap, hygienic alternative, well suited to automatic packaging, for such commodities as cement and fertilizers which were previously packed in jute sacks.

The trend of course has not been all in favor of paper and paperboard. Other materials, notably plastics, have been replacing paper and paperboard in some of its packaging applications. The paper industry has responded to this challenge by devising new forms of packaging based on combinations of paper with plastics or metal foils. Such combinations can combine the advantages of paper - firmness, rigidity, ability to take print clearly and attractively - and of plastics - impenetrability to moisture and vapors and resistance to fats and oils - or of metal foils strength, protection against light, steam, gas and foreign flavors. Nevertheless, inroads have been made into paper and paperboard usage.

From the complex of different developments in packaging, certain underlying factors can be discerned as being of importance in determining the type of packaging adopted: original cost, technical performance, and factors affecting cost " placed in use " such as convenience, freight savings and reduction in labor costs. As the cost of the raw material constitutes so large a part of the cost of packaging, the prices, and shifts in prices, of packaging materials are very important. In the recent past, prices of packaging grades of paper and paperboard have in general been fairly stable, but there has been a sharp and persistent downward trend in the price of plastic packaging.

Prospects for the period up to 1975

The further evolution of consumption of paper and paperboard in the interval to 1975 is expected to be determined, as in the past, mainly by the rate of growth and level of income per caput. The future economic and population growth expected has been set out in Chapter I.

Of the nonincome factors, a development of possible significance to the future level of use of cultural papers concerns literacy. Many of the developing countries are currently planning to, or are engaged upon, accelerating the effort to extend education to all or the greater part of their populations. It is therefore possible that in countries where the spread of literacy is accelerated in the course of the period to 1975, the growth in demand for cultural papers will be faster than anticipated on the basis of their assumed growth in income per caput.

The future of the growth in use of industrial papers and paperboards rests largely upon the continued success of these materials in the packaging field. Because the outlets for packaging paper and paperboard are so many and varied, it is not possible to predict whether in aggregate they are likely to maintain their advantage over alternative materials. On the one hand, the use of paper and paperboard packaging is still being vigorously extended into fields using other materials: for example, the " bag and box " system of paperboard container with plastic liner is now beginning to be used for packaging motor oil and other fluids. There are many more applications where paper and paperboard have not exploited fully markets where their use for packaging has already been established and proved.

At the same time, the competitive pressures from other packaging materials are intensifying in other areas. Particular mention must be made of plastics. The widening cost advantage that their falling price gives them, and the potential for widening it further, combined with the technological advances in the type and form of plastic that can be made available, heighten their competitive position. For instance, multiwall paper sacks, which only recently displaced hessian for packaging fertilizers, are now in turn being replaced by polyethylene plastic sacks.

The forward estimates presented in this study in fact assume that there will not be a major shift away from paper and paperboard as a packaging material in the period up to 1975. In other words, it has been assumed that the paper and paperboard packaging industry will continue to adapt itself progressively to the quickly changing conditions presented by such factors as the rapid growth in the challenge from plastics, as it has done successfully during the recent past. It should be kept in mind therefore that this challenge is likely to be appreciably stronger than in the past.

The discussion above is of particular relevance to the high-use countries. In the developing countries where use is still low, consumption of paper and paperboard packaging is if anything likely to grow faster than predicted on the basis of their expected growth in income per caput, because of the suitability of these materials for some of the foodstuffs and products, such as cement, which loom large in the total output of goods in many of these countries. Where initial use in a country is low, adoption of paper or paperboard by a major industry can wholly alter the magnitude of the country's aggregate use. Where such transformations in use are expected," the forward estimates have been adjusted to reflect it.

¹⁷ For example, the impending large-scale use in western Africa of paperboard containers for the packaging of bananas for export.

Requirements in 1975

It is estimated that in 1975 the world will require about 162 million metric tons of paper and paperboard - substantially more than twice as much as was consumed in 1961. Given the rates of economic and population growth assumed in this study,¹⁸ consumption of paper and paperboard will rise rather more slowly than in the recent past in the developed market economies, but more rapidly than in the past in the U.S.S.R. and most other centrally-planned economies, and in the developing countries (Table II-23 and Annex Table II-D). As growth starts from very much higher initial levels of use in the developed countries, these countries will account for the larger part of the absolute increase in the quantities of paper and paperboard consumed in the world. As a large and expanding part of the huge increases in consumption in the developed countries is likely to be comprised of industrial papers and paperboards, use of this group will continue to grow faster than use of cultural papers, rising to about 105 million metric tons used industrially in 1975 - which would be nearly two thirds of all paper and paperboard consumed in that year. Within the group of cultural papers, consumption of printing and writing papers, rising 31 million metric tons a year, would be growing considerably faster than newsprint consumption, which would nevertheless still rise to about 27 million metric tons in 1975 (Table II-24 and Annex Table II-D).

¹⁸ See Chapter I.

TABLE II-23. - ESTIMATED GROWTH IN TOTAL CONSUMPTION OF PAPER AND PAPERBOARD, 1960-62 TO 1975

	Consumption			Consumption per 1 000 capita
	1960-62	1975	Index	1962	1975	Index
	Million MT		1961 = 100	MT		1961 - 100
Europe	22.87	50.60	221	50.50	99.40	197
U.S.S.R.	3.47	15.00	432	15.91	57.50	361
North America	37.37	56.40	151	185.00	227.60	123
Latin America	2.66	6.90	259	12.40	21.40	173
Africa	0.90	2.50	283	3.22	6.40	199
Asia-Pacific	10.20	30.50	300	6.14	14.00	230
WORLD TOTAL	77.47	161.90	209	25.60	41.40	162

¹ See also Annex Table II-D.

TABLE II-24. - ESTIMATED CONSUMPTION OF PAPER AND PAPERBOARD IN 1975, BY CATEGORY¹

	Newsprint		Other printing and writing paper		Industrial paper and paperboard
	Million MT	1961 = 100	Million MT	1961 = 100	Million MT	1961 = 100
Europe	8.10	196	10.40	216	32.10	231
U.S.S.R.	1.40	327	3.20	441	10.40	449
North America	9.90	139	9.50	149	37.00	155
Latin America	1.80	248	1.20	259	3.80	263
Africa	0.50	286	0.60	240	1.50	303
Asia-Pacific	4.60	242	5.70	353	20.20	303
WORLD TOTAL	26.30	182	30.50	215	105.10	215

¹ See also Annex Table II-D.

Roundwood

The present section deals with roundwood used as such, that is to say, roundwood which is not processed before use and which is not used as fuelwood. The uses to which this wood is put are usually simple, and it is nearly always a product with low unit value. As has been indicated in Table II-25 it adds very little to the aggregate value of the products from the forest. But the volumes involved are large, and in terms of quantity it figures second only to fuelwood in the wood products used in most developing countries. In these countries it continues to be a most important product.

The statistics on roundwood leave much to be desired. As much of the production goes unrecorded, the data are necessarily based largely on subjective estimates. Furthermore, an important roundwood group, pitprops, is frequently recorded and reported with pulpwood and it is not always possible to distinguish it separately. Table II-26 reproduces the best available data on roundwood use in 1961. It also shows, for the major global groupings, the trend in recorded consumption from 1951 to 1963. However, it must be accepted that these data are not accurate enough to support further analysis than that:

1. in aggregate, world consumption of roundwood apparently did not grow during the period;

2. such growth as did occur took place in the developing countries;

3. even in these countries use per caput generally declined.

TABLE II-25. - GROWTH IN VALUE OF WOOD PRODUCTS CONSUMED, 1960-62 TO 1975 (AT CONSTANT 1960 AVERAGE PRICES)

	1960-62	1975
	1 000 million U.S. $
Sawnwood	13.7	16.9
Panel products ¹	2.6	6.5
Pulp products²	12.9	27.1
Roundwood	1.6	1.6
Fuelwood	4.4	4.8
TOTAL	35.2	56.9

¹ Excluding veneers. - ² Excluding dissolving pulp.

TABLE II-26. - CHANGE IN RECORDED CONSUMPTION OF ROUNDWOOD, 1950-52 TO 1963, AND ESTIMATED TOTAL CONSUMPTION, 1960-62 ¹

¹ See also Annex Table II-E. - ² Excluding pitprops. - ³ Production. - ⁴ Estimated total consumption in 1960-62 differs from that recorded by an allowance for unrecorded consumption.

As is to be expected, the consumption of roundwood is much more evenly distributed between the different parts of the world than is consumption of processed wood products. North America and Europe consume about 30 percent of the total, Africa (excluding southern Africa), Asia (excluding Japan) and Latin America consume about the same amount. Use per head in North America and Europe is only two to three times as much as in most of Latin America, Africa and Asia. The one region where the level of use is widely different is the U.S.S.R., where it is still very high, though now declining rapidly.

Quantitatively the most important use of roundwood is as a structural building material in simple, traditional construction. With rising income it is progressively replaced as the principal building material by more durable materials, but its use persists in rural and farm building and for such uses as fencing. It therefore remains an important constituent of the wood-using economy as long as the rural sector remains large. Through the early stages of development the shift to other materials is likely to be more than offset by the rise in population. As has been pointed out in Chapter I, in the interval to 1975 a very large and growing part of the world's population will be living in countries where the bulk of the population is living in such traditional rural environments. The additional roundwood requirements generated by this huge population expansion are likely to be very considerable.

Roundwood is also extensively used as scaffolding and formwork supports, uses which account for much of the still large use in many developed countries. In these applications there is a strong tendency for wood to be replaced by metal, and at the same time the new industrialized building systems which involve little more work on the site than the dry assembly of prefabricated parts are reducing the need for scaffolding and formwork any description.

A quantitatively much smaller but qualitatively important use of roundwood is as transmission poles. This use requires poles of a large size and good quality. For this purpose, wood faces competition from concrete and metal, but improved methods of treatment help to keep it competitive (though by lengthening its life in use it reduces the frequency of replacement and hence annual consumption). Similar considerations apply to the use of large roundwood for piling.

Outside its use in construction, the principal use of roundwood is as mining supports (pitprops), most of it being used in coal mines. The recent past has seen major advances made in developed countries toward mechanizing coal mining, either, as in North America and western Europe, to improve the price position of coal as it came under increasing competition from other fuels or, as in eastern Europe and the U.S.S.R., to accelerate the expansion in output of coal. The process has brought about a sharp reduction in the use of hand-erected pitprops per ton of coal mined, as is shown by Table II-27. It is to be anticipated that this trend will continue and spread elsewhere as labor costs rise. But huge quantities are still used, notably in the U.S.S.R. In China (Mainland), another user of very large quantities of pitprops, there is evidence that consumption has in fact been rising recently, as it is likely to do in developing countries with expanding coal-mining industries. But, with the decline in the position of pitprops in the major developed mining countries, the tendency will be for overall use in the world to grow very little - any such growth being generated by a growth in coal output that more than offsets the decline in intensity of use of wood in coal mining.

It is estimated that in 1975 the world will require roughly as much roundwood for use in that form as it used in 1960-62: about 200 million cubic meters a year. As is shown in Table II-28 and Annex Table II-E, this apparent stability in use is actually made up of substantial decreases in the quantities used by most of the developed regions, and counterbalancing increases in overall use in the developing regions.

TABLE II-27. - USE OF ROUNDWOOD PER THOUSAND TONS OF COAL PRODUCED IN SELECTED COUNTRIES

	1935	1950	1955	1960
	m3
United Kingdom	..	112.0	..	19.0
France	..	145.0	..	126.0
Spain	..	164.0	..	162.0
Poland	..	123.0	..	124.0
U.S.S.R.	..	146.0	..	141.0
United States	6.8	4.5	..	22.6
India	..	..	7.8	..
Japan	..	..	49.0	..
Australia	..	..	16.0	..

SOURCES: FAO/ECE. Trends in the utilization of wood and its products: sector study on mining timber. Geneva, 1962. U. S. Forest Service Timber trends in the United States. Washington, D.C., 1965. Forest Resource Report No. 17. United Nations/FAO. Timber trends and prospects in the Asia-Pacific region. Rome, 1961.

¹ Roundwood and sawnwood - ²1962.

TABLE II-28. - ESTIMATED CHANGE IN TOTAL CONSUMPTION OF ROUNDWOOD, 1960-62 TO 1975¹

	1960-62	1975	Change 1961-75
	Million m³		1961=100
Europe	36.60	23.80	65
U.S.S.R	67.30	60.00	89
North America	18.60	11.00	59
Latin America	8.50	12.10	142
Africa	13.30	16.50	124
Asia-Pacific	44.10	61.80	140
WORLD TOTAL	188.00	185.00	98

¹ See also Annex Table II-E.

Fuelwood

The reservations advanced above with respect to the data on roundwood apply even more forcefully to the quantitative information about fuelwood: for most parts of the world the data cannot be considered as showing more than the broad orders of magnitude involved. Nevertheless, the salient feature of world fuelwood use is so striking that broad orders of magnitude suffice to illustrate it: namely, that fuelwood still makes up as much as half of all the wood used in the world today.

Table II-2 shows that the importance of fuelwood as a use of wood varies widely between the different parts of the world. In Africa and Latin America, nearly nine tenths of all wood used is fuelwood; in Asia (excluding Japan), the figure is two thirds; in Europe and the U.S.S.R., more than a quarter; and in North America, one tenth. In the developing countries fuel remains quantitatively the most important use for wood.

Table II-29 shows the recorded changes in fuelwood consumption between 1951 and 1963. While the poorness of - the data severely limits the extent to which conclusions can be drawn from these figures, it can be accepted that there has been a marked absolute decline in the use of fuelwood in the developed countries, and that in the developing countries use has seldom been growing faster than growth in population.

Wood as a fuel has high weight to value and weight to calorific output ratios. It can seldom support the cost of transportation over any distance and remain competitive with other fuels. With the increasing urbanization of the world's population, and the spreading economic availability of other fuels - usually simpler and cleaner as well as cheaper to use - fuelwood is displaced. Initially it is often displaced by charcoal, a more compact form of wood fuel, and therefore cheaper to transport. But charcoal in turn in due course gives way to coal, gas, oil, electricity, and other fuels.

The decline in fuelwood use will inevitably continue. But, as with roundwood, the huge expansion in rural populations in the developing countries will still sustain and increase the aggregate needs for fuelwood in the interval to 1975 and for some time beyond. As is shown in Table II-30 and Annex Table II-E, it is estimated that this expansion in the already very large quantities used in the developing countries will, in the period to 1975, more than offset the concurrent reduction in use in the developed regions, so that world consumption of fuelwood in 1975 is likely to be somewhat above its 1960-62 level of about 1,000 million cubic meters a year.

TABLE II-29. - CHANGE IN RECORDED CONSUMPTION OF FUELWOOD,¹ 1950-52 TO 1963, AND ESTIMATED TOTAL CONSUMPTION 1960-62 ¹

	Recorded consumption					Estimated total
	1950-524	1955-57	1960-62	1963	Change 1951-61	1960-62
TOTAL CONSUMPTION	Million m³				1951=100	Million m³
Europe	117.60	110.40	107.90	103.40	92	108.00
U.S.S.R.	108.00	121.90	100.90	96.70	93	101.00
North America	66.70	60.10	46.10	37.10	69	46.00
Latin America	174.20	175.30	191.00	210.70	110	192.00
Africa	148.00	156.70	172.00	180.40	116	183.00
Asia-Pacific	251.10	252.10	259.90	259.00	104	458.00
WORLD TOTAL	866.00	877.00	878.00	887.00	101	1088.00
CONSUMPTION PER THOUSAND CAPITA	m3				m3
Europe	282	256	238	223	84	238
U.S.S.R	587	610	463	430	79	463
North America	395	325	228	178	58	228
Latin America	1048	927	887	927	85	893
Africa	711	674	617	612	87	655
Asia-Pacific	182	166	157	150	86	276
WORLD TOTAL	343	318	290	282	85	359

¹ Including wood for charcoal. - ² see also Annex Table II-E. - ³ Estimated total consumption in 1960-62 differs from that recorded by an allowance for unrecorded consumption. - ⁴ Production.

TABLE II-30. - ESTIMATED CHANGE IN TOTAL CONSUMPTION OF FUELWOOD, 1960-62 TO 1975 ¹

	1960-62	1975	Change 1961-75
	Million m³		1961 = 100
Europe	108.00	74.00	69
U.S.S.R	101.00	80.00	79
North America	46.00	34.00	74
Latin America	192.00	220.00	114
Africa	183.00	246.00	135
Asia-Pacific	458.00	545.00	119
WORLD TOTAL	1 088.00	1 199.00	110

¹ See also Annex Table II-E.

Later in this study, consideration will be given to some of the implications of this huge requirement, including the extent to which this use draws on wood which might be used as raw material for industry. At this stage it should be noted that though much fuelwood could equally be used as pulpwood or poles, probably the bulk of the wood which is used for fuel is of sizes and qualities, or from locations, which are of little or no industrial value.

Aggregate world demand for wood up to 1975

It now remains to consider what the expected requirements for additional quantities of each of the different wood products add up to in terms of total quantities of wood. In order to set the stage for the examination of the problems and prospects of raising supplies of wood and wood products which will occupy much of the rest of the study, it is pertinent to consider how fast requirements are growing, what quantities of products and wood raw material will be required by 1975, in what form it will be required, and where it will be required.

Table II-31 sets out the estimates of the aggregate growth in world consumption of wood and its products to 1975 likely to be associated with the growth in population and income assumed for the period. It is important to keep in mind that the levels of consumption estimated will only be realized if this particular conjuncture of levels of population, income, price, etc., comes about; and that a different development of the underlying factors is likely to be accompanied not only by a higher or lower aggregate level of consumption in 1975, but also a different product mix and a different distribution of consumption between the different regions. However, there is every reason to expect that the general pattern of requirements will be very much as set out here and also, by and large, the general orders of magnitude.

The estimates set out in Table II-31 indicate that by 1975 the world is likely to require annually about 560 million cubic meters more wood raw material than in 1961 - an increase of about 25 percent to a total annual consumption of nearly 2,700 million cubic meters of wood.¹⁹ A number of important trends emerge from the data in the table, and from what has been discussed earlier in the chapter. Firstly, there is the steady growth in the use of wood as an industrial raw material rather than as a material to be burned or used in its raw state. Enormous quantities of roundwood will continue to be used for fuel and construction, but the growth in aggregate use of wood in the future, as in the recent past, will stem from its growing industrial applications. Furthermore, it is the more highly manufactured of the 'industrial wood products that show the fastest growth in consumption. As products such as paper and plywood have higher unit values per cubic meter of wood raw material than the simpler products such as sawnwood, their growing share in the wood product mix is causing the value of the wood products used in the world to rise much faster than the volume of wood used. Between 1951 and 1961, the volume of roundwood used in the world rose by about 15 percent, while over the same period the value (at constant prices) of the primary wood products used rose by about 35 percent. Similarly, the estimated 25 percent further rise in the-volume of wood used annually by 1975 would mean a rise of 60 percent in the real value of the wood products consumed each year (see Table II-25). At this rate the use of wood products used in the world, in terms of real value, is doubling every 20 or 21 years.

¹⁹ The different wood products are aggregated and compared with one another by expressing them in terms of the wood raw material needed to produce them. In practice, a large part of the raw material for the pulp and particle and fibreboard industries is wood residues from other industries. (Consideration of how much of the world's wood raw material will come from residues- is to be found in Chapter IV, together with a discussion of trends in the transformation ratios between raw material and product for each industry.) The present estimates 'are intended to show no more than the broad orders of magnitude of the wood requirements involved, and standard FAO conversion factors have been used for all the regions and for the different time periods.

TABLE II-31. - ESTIMATED CHANGE IN WORLD CONSUMPTION OF WOOD AND WOOD PRODUCTS, 1960-62 TO 1975

	Million units	1960-62	1975	Increase 1961-75
				Volume	Index
WOOD PRODUCTS					1961 = 100
Sawnwood	Cubic meters (s)	346.20	427.30	81.10	123
Pulp products ¹	Metric tons	77.50	161.90	84.40	209
Panel products ²	Cubic meters (s)	30.50	75.80	45.30	248
Roundwood	Cubic meters ®	188.00	185.00	- 3.00	98
Fuelwood	Cubic meters ®	1088.00	1199.00	111.00	110
WOOD RAW MATERIAL³
Sawlogs and veneer logs	Cubic meters ®	629.10	812.00	183.00	129
Pulpwood 4	"	226.30	493.00	267.00	218
Other industrial wood	"	188.00	185.00	- 3.00	98
Total industrial wood	"	1043.00	1490.00	447.00	143
Fuelwood	"	1088.00	1199.00	111.00	110
TOTAL	"	2131.00	2689.00	558.00	126

¹ Excludes dissolving pulp, includes some nonwood fiber products. - ² Excludes veneer. - ³ See footnote 3 in Table II-2. - ⁴ Includes roundwood used for the manufacture of particle board and fibreboard.

This serves to underline the next point: that consumption of wood products is now growing very fast. Quite apart from that part of the rise in the real value of the product of the forest sector which is due to the shift within the forest products sector to products which give a greater physical and value yield from a unit of wood - a shift necessary if wood is to retain its place in a world economy, the continued growth of which is built upon an ability to utilize the world's resources ever more efficiently - the volumes of wood used annually are in many parts of the world growing by margins which are known to be greater than during the early part of the century.

TABLE II-32. - PAST CONSUMPTION OF WOOD IN EUROPE, U.S.S.R., UNITED STATES AND JAPAN AND ESTIMATES OF FUTURE CONSUMPTION

SOURCES: United Nations/FAO. European timber trends and prospects: anew appraisal, 1960-1975. New York, 1964. Buchholz, Erwin. Die Waldwirtschaft und Holzindustrie der Sowjetunion. München, BLV 1961. U. S. Forest Service. Timber trends in the United States. Washington, D.C., 1956. Forest Resource Report No. 17 and Timber resources for America's future. Washington, D.C., 1958. Forest Resource Report No. 14. Japan. Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry. Statistical yearbooks. Tokyo. Japan. Forestry Agency. Forestry in Japan. Tokyo, 1960.

¹ 1961, - ² 1929, - ³ 1935-37. - ⁴ Planned removals. - ⁵ 1952. - ⁶ 1932. - ⁷ Removals. - ⁸ 1936-38.

In part this upward surge in use of wood is a reflection of the change in the world's economic attitudes and policies. Prewar concern with economic stability, has given way to a drive for economic growth, and demand for wood has grown along with the overall growth that has been experienced in many parts of the world. The years ahead will be marked by a continued effort, on the part of both developed and developing countries, to sustain and if possible raise the rate of economic growth. Its propulsive effect on wood use is consequently likely to continue. This will be tempered in the large parts of the world where the greater part of the wood used is consumed in the form of fuelwood and poles by the fact that rising incomes seldom raise consumption of these commodities: in terms of use, per caput consumption in fact tends to decline. (Nor, over much of the world, is consumption of sawnwood very responsive to rising income.) But aggregate use of wood is still likely to be pushed up by the rapid rates of population growth.

It is, however, in the countries where the shift in the pattern of use of wood has progressed to the point where a large part of the wood used is now consumed in the form of pulp and panel products, that the growth in aggregate demand for wood is assuming a new dimension. The much faster growth in consumption of these products has been, as has been seen in this chapter, in large part because they have been replacing wood in sawn form in so many of its applications. As these reconstituted wood products are more efficient than sawnwood, in the sense of the amount of product obtained from a unit of wood raw material, this shift; has brought about a more economical overall use of wood. As is shown in Table II-32, during the 40 years prior to mid-century, overall use of wood in Europe did not rise at all, and in the United States even the total use of industrial wood did not grow. By the early part of the century use of wood in solid form had passed its peak, in terms of intensity of use, in most of these countries²⁰ and thereafter was losing ground - to nonwood materials as well as reconstituted forms of wood -at a rate which largely if not wholly offset the effect of growing populations and incomes.

²⁰ In the United States, for instance, consumption of sawnwood per caput was twice as great in 1900 as it was in 1950 (though by 1950 it had risen substantially again from the low point reached in the 1930s), and the total volume of sawnwood consumed annually during the first years of the century has never yet been reached again. (U.S. Forest Service, Timber resources for America's future, Washington, D.C. Forest Resource Report No. 14.) Consumption of sawnwood had in fact grown very rapidly during the latter part of the 19th century, and it should be borne in mind that there were these earlier periods of rapidly expanding use of wood in solid form, when wood was the principal building material, and earlier when wood was an important source of fuel and energy.

FIGURE 2. - ESTIMATED GROWTH IN CONSUMPTION OF INDUSTRIAL WOOD,¹ 1950-52 TO 1975

¹ Wood raw material equivalents of all wood products consumed (excluding veneer and dissolving pulp).

But by mid-century in both regions, the quantities of pulp and panel products used had grown to such an extent that they accounted for a large share of the total quantities of wood used. Consequently overall wood requirements have begun to rise again, reflecting the growing magnitude of the quantities of wood raw material needed to meet the continued rapid rise in consumption of paper, paperboard, plywood, fibreboard and particle board. As has been seen in this chapter, demand for these products is expected to continue to grow strongly with the further rise in income in these regions, and will come increasingly to dominate the pattern of wood use.

As is to be seen from the series in Table II-32, the resulting impact on total wood requirements is likely to be striking, in particular in its contrast to the much more limited changes which took place earlier in the century. It is expected that in Europe over the quarter century to 1975, during which period the share of industrial wood consumed as pulp and panel products is expected to rise from a fifth to a half, the region's total consumption of industrial wood will approximately double, and aggregate use of all wood will rise by a half. A similar trend is expected in the United States, where it is estimated, in the series shown in Table II-32,²¹ that by the end of the century annual consumption of industrial wood will be double what it was through the first half of the century and that total use of wood will be about 75 percent higher than at mid-century.

²¹ Timber trends in the United States, Table 45, p. 64-65.

In Japan, another major consuming country where much of the wood used is by now consumed in pulp and panel product form, overall use of wood also seems to have risen very little over the 35 years for which data are available. Use of wood for industrial purposes has risen steadily, under the impetus of the country's very rapid economic growth, but has been offset in the total by the rapid decline in the use of fuelwood. In the interval to 1975, use of pulp and panel products, which is already high, is expected to grow so rapidly that, despite a much more intensive shift away from sawnwood than has happened in the past, the country's total annual wood requirements are also likely to rise by a much larger margin than was experienced over any similar period during the previous quarter century.

In the U.S.S.R., on the other hand, which accounts for roughly another quarter of all industrial wood used in the world, the nature and tempo of change have been somewhat different. The total quantities of wood consumed have been rising rapidly over a lengthy period, due to the rapid growth of the country's economy, and continued, and in fact growing, use of wood in sawn and round form. Now that alternative materials are becoming available in greater abundance the use of sawnwood and roundwood is expected to. fall off sharply, so that the country is likely to experience the check in the rise in overall wood requirements that happened earlier in North America and Europe. In the short run, the country's total wood requirements are consequently expected to rise more slowly than in the recent past. But, over the longer term, the rapid shift in the direction of using wood in reconstituted rather than solid form now taking place is likely in due course to propel aggregate use of wood up with renewed impetus, as has happened in the other major consuming countries.

In aggregate, therefore, the changing pattern of wood use is bringing about very important changes in the wood using and producing economy. Firstly, as has been noted above, the additional quantities of wood that will be required by the major consuming regions will be much greater than in the first half of the century, and in Europe and the United States this will be in abrupt contrast with the earlier more modest changes in the demand - a contrast that will inevitably be felt even more sharply on the supply side (as was noted above, it is expected that by 1975 overall annual industrial wood requirements in Europe, for instance, will be double what they were through most of the first half of the century).

Secondly, the changes which comprise this growth in requirements will mean a change in the composition of the wood raw material to be supplied. As is shown in Table II-31, the demand for sawnwood and hence for sawlogs is not expected to rise very fast, but the quantities involved will still be considerable. It is estimated that 1975 requirements of sawlogs will be about 140 million cubic meters higher than they were in 1961. Demand for veneer logs will be growing rapidly and annual requirements are likely to rise by at least 40 million cubic meters over this period. With the need for good form and quality, and usually for large size, this is a demand which is likely to be particularly difficult to meet. But by far the most important rise in requirements both in terms of the quantities involved and also because of the rate at which it is growing - is going to be for wood for pulping. Require meets in 1975 are likely to be some 265 million cubic meters higher than in 1961. As wood for pulping is generally drawn from the smaller, or poorer quality sizes of roundwood and from wood residues, the need is going to be increasingly one for wood quantity rather than quality, form and size. As traditional forest production management is designed primarily to produce the size and quality of log needed for sawing, this shift in the pattern of demand for wood raw material is likely to have important implications for the wood producing sector.²²

²² In some areas this shift in demand from wood quality and size to wood quantity for pulping may be partly met by the concurrent decline in the use of pulpable wood as fuelwood. However? this effect is expected to have only limited application; much of the wood at present used as fuelwood is as yet technically or more commonly economically not usable for industrial purposes.

Thirdly, there is the question of where the additional requirements will emerge. This is shown in Table IT-33. As shifts in consumption are so closely related to the underlying changes in economic activity, it is necessary when comparing the forward estimates for different regions to keep in mind the rates of economic growth that were assumed for each in Chapter I. But, even if economic growth proves to be faster or slower than has been assumed, it is clear that huge additional quantities of wood will be required in areas, such as northwestern Europe and Japan, which already have to import an important part of their requirements? for example, hardwoods from the tropics. The extent to which their further growth in demand is likely to be met from domestic resources or from an extension of trade can only be discussed after the examination of the supply situation in the following chapters.

TABLE: II-33. - ESTIMATED CHANGE IN ANNUAL WOOD CONSUMPTION BETWEEN 1960-62 AND 1975

	Sawnwood	Panel² products	Pulp³ products	Roundwood	Total industrial wood	Fuelwood	Total
	Million m³ wood raw material equivalents¹
EUROPE	+ 15.8	+ 20.9	+ 76.1	- 12.8	+ 4100.0	- 33.9	+ 66.1
of which:
Northwestern Europe4	+ 9.7	+ 12.1	+ 49.2	- 5.3	+ 65.7	- 12.4	+ 53.3
U.S.S.R.	+ 18.7	+ 19.0	+ 31.6	- 7.4	+ 61.9	- 21.0	+ 41.0
NORTH AMERICA	+ 23.3	+ 22.0	+ 51.4	- 7.6	+ 89.1	- 12.0	+ 77.0
of which:
United States	+ 21.2	+ 19.7	+ 46.7	- 7.3	+ 80.3	- 11.0	+ 69.0
LATIN AMERICA	+ 21.7	+ 2.1	+ 11.6	+ 3.6	+ 39.0	+ 28.0	+ 67.0
AFRICA	+ 6.0	+ 1.6	+ 4.5	+ 3.2	+ 15.3	+ 63.0	+ 78.0
of which:
Southern Africa	+ 0. 3	+ 1.5	- 0.6	+ 1.2	+ 1.0	+ 2.0
ASIA-PACIFIC	+ 55.4	+ 11.9	+ 55.8	+ 17.6	+ 140.7	+ 87.0	+ 228.0
of which:
Japan	+ 20.8	+ 6.1	+ 26.1	+ 0.9	+ 53.9	- 3.0	+ 51.0
China (Mainland)	+ 16.4	+ 2.7	+ 16.1	+ 5.5	+ 40.7	+ 10.0	+ 51.0
Pacific	+ 3.0	+ 0.2	+ 3.0	+ 0.0	+ 6.2	- 1.0	+ 5.0

¹ See footnote 3 in Table II-2. -² Excluding veneer. - ³ Excluding dissolving pulp. - ⁴ EEC, United Kingdom and Ireland.

Finally, a basic assumption underlying most of the forward estimates contained in this study has been that the relationships between the prices of wood products and the prices of their nearest substitutes will not change in the course of the period to 1975. But the appraisal above indicates that the changes in the magnitude, tempo and pattern of demand for wood products that emerge under such an assumption will be such as to certainly tax the supply sector severely. One further line of query that will, therefore, run through the rest of the study will be to consider whether or not it is likely that prices can be maintained in the relationship assumed and, if the answer is in the negative, to consider how resulting higher prices are likely to react upon the use of wood in the world economy. It will suffice, in concluding this chapter, to draw attention once again to the fact that the preceding estimates are linked to this assumption: these levels of consumption in 1975 will not be realized if the assumed price relationships have changed significantly by then.

ANNEX TABLE II-A - ESTIMATED TOTAL CONSUMPTION WOOD PRODUCTS PER THOUSAND CAPITA IN 1960-62, BY INCOME CLASS¹

Income class	Region	Consumption per thousand capita
		Sawnwood	Panels	Paper and paperboard	Roundwood	Fuelwood
U.S.$ per person		m³		MT	m³
More than 2 000	United States	467.4	80.0	190.9	93.6	214.0
1 500 - 2 000	Northern Europe	491.5	55.9	104.1	218.0	984.0
	Canada	464.6	86.2	125.2	75.0	370.0
	Pacific	419.7	25.4	78.5	71.3	570.2
1 000 - 1 500	EEC	169.3	22.4	63.2	70.0	215.0
	United Kingdom and Ireland	181.3	22.7	97.8	18.8	10.7
	Central Europe	168.1	19.1	36.0	134.5	352.3
500 - 1 000	(Eastern Europe)	202.2	13.3	26.8	133.0	170.4
	(U.S.S.R.)	457.4	10.3	15.9	309.0	462.8
	Southern Africa	63.0	8.1	21.4	118.0	136.0
	Japan	308.7	16.0	53.1	73.0	167.0
300 - 500	Southern Europe	55.3	3.6	9.8	23.9	299.0
	Mexico	27.5	1.9	15.4	30.5	239.0
	Caribbean	30.3	1.7	11.1	12.0	593.0
	Northern south America	57.5	2.0	13.0	51.5	1052.1
	Southeast south America	65.8	3.2	22.7	33.5	452.0
	Mediterranean Basin	57.0	8.4	11.1	6.8	43.4
150 - 300	Central America	70.6	1.7	6.4	60.0	1301.0
	Brazil	75.7	3.3	9.4	34.1	1462.0
	Southwest S. America	55.5	1.3	8.6	65.0	473.1
	Northern Africa	18.3	1.2	5.7	6.1	78.1
	Southwest Asia	12.7	0.9	1.8	131.0	132.0
	Arabian Peninsula	0.4	1.4	0.8	13.9	36.2
	East Asia (less Japan)	24.2	3.3	7.8	31.0	289.0
Less than 150	Western Africa	9.2	0.5	0.8	42.2	709.0
	Eastern Africa	9.2	0.8	1.3	66.8	1053.9
	Continental southeast Asia	26.3	0.6	1.9	32.0	447.4
	Insular southeast Asia	28.1	1.6	1.8	57.7	853.3
	South Asia	6.0	0.2	1.2	7.0	292.2
	(China Mainland)	16.0	0.3	3.7	22.0	151.5

¹ For all countries except those with centrally-planned economies the measure of income employed is based upon the estimates of gross domestic product published in the United Nations Yearbook of national accounts statistics, 1963, Table 3B (these estimates are expressed in United States dollars, using a parity rate for conversion from units of national currency). For the centrally-planned economies an attempt has been made to express net material product in terms roughly comparable to the measure of GDP used for the rest of the world, in order to complete the worldwide comparison attempted in this table. However, this can provide no more than very broad orders of magnitude and the subregions encompassing the centrally-planned economies may belong correctly in income brackets other than those shown here.

ANNEX TABLE II-B. - CONSUMPTION OF SAWNWOOD, 1960-62 AND ESTIMATED 1975

	Total consumption			Total consumption per thousand capita		Average annual rate of change in total consumption
	1960-62 ¹		1975	1960-62	1975	1956-1961² actual	1961-1975 estimated
EUROPE	Million m³			m³ per 1 000 capita		Percent
Northern Europe		9.93	8.60	492	384	+ 2.2	- 1.0
EEC		28.99	34.00	169	180	+ 2.4	+ 1.1
United Kingdom and Ireland		10.10	10.70	181	181	+ 1.4	+ 0.4
Central Europe		5.24	5.80	168	161	+ 4.6	+ 0.7
Southern Europe		4.23	7.10	55	77	+ 7.0	+ 3.8
Eastern Europe		19.82	21.10	202	192	+ 0.3	+ 0.4
Total		78.31	87.30	173	172	+ 2.0	+ 0.8
U.S.S.R		99.72	111.00	457	426	+ 5.6	+ 0.8
NORTH AMERICA
Canada		8.49	9.70	465	393	- 3.3	+ 1.0
United States		85.88	98.20	467	440	- 1.4	+ 1.0
Total		94.37	107.90	467	436	- 1.6	+ 1.0
LATIN AMERICA
Mexico		0.99	2.40	28	41	- 3.4	+ 6.4
Central America		0.87	1.90	71	99	+ 6.0	+ 5.8
Caribbean		0.61	1.60	30	57	+ 2.0	+ 7.0
Northern South America		1.58	3.50	58	78	+ 0.1	+ 5.8
Southwest South America		1.21	1.40	56	45	+ 7.6	+ 1.2
Brazil		5.43	11.40	76	105	+ 2.9	+ 5.4
Southeast South America		1.70	2.60	66	80	- 3.5	+ 3.1
Total		12.39	24.70	58	77	- 1.2	+ 5.1
AFRICA
Western	(0.89)	1.08	2.80	9	17	+ 4.5	+ 7.0
Eastern	(0.60)	0.81	1.60	9	13	- 2.9	+ 5.1
Northern	(1.07)	1.01	1.70	18	21	+4.6	+ 3.9
Southern		1.14	1.30	63	52	- 0.1	+ 1.1
Total	(3.70)	4.05	7.50	15	19	+ 1.6	+ 4.5
NEAR EAST ³
Mediterranean Basin		0.65	1.20	57	69	+ 4.7	+ 4.2
Southwest Asia		0.53	1.10	13	18	+ 11.8	+ 5.1
Arabian Peninsula	(0.03)	0.15	0.20	10	12	+ 5.1	+ 2.0
Total	(1.20)	1.33	2.50	20	26	+ 7.5	+ 4.6
FAR EAST
Continental southeast Asia	(2.27)	2.55	4.20	26	30	- 1.0	+ 3.6
Insular southeast Asia	(2.75)	3.60	5.90	28	32	- 0.8	+ 3.5
South Asia	(1.83)	3.31	5.80	6	8	+ 2.5	+ 4.1
Japan	(27.80)	29.03	41.00	309	386	+ 5.5	+ 2.4
East Asia (less Japan)	(0.94)	1.18	2.10	24	29	+ 3.2	+ 4.3
Total	(35.35)	39.67	59.00	43	46	+ 4.3	+ 2.8
PACIFIC		5.80	7.50	420	420	+ 0.5	+ 1.9
MAINLAND CHINA		10.53	20.00	16	25	+ 2.4	+ 4.7
WORLD TOTAL	(341.04)	346.17	427.30	114	109	+ 2.0	+ 1.5

¹ Figures for 1960-62 are estimated average total annual consumption. Where recorded consumption is significantly different it is shown in brackets. For an explanation of the differences, see the Appendix, - ² Refers to growth in recorded consumption. - ³ In this region a considerable proportion of sawnwood consumed is imported in manufactured form. This is not included in the 1960-62 figures but is allowed for in the estimates for 1975.

ANNEX TABLE II-C - CONSUMPTION OF WOOD-BASED PANELS, 1960-62¹ AND ESTIMATED 1975

¹ Figures for 1960-62 are estimated average total annual consumption. Where recorded consumption is significantly different it is shown in brackets. For an explanation of the differences, see the Appendix. - ² Refers to growth in recorded consumption. - ³ Excluding sliced and peeled wood used for packaging.

ANNEX TABLE II-D. - CONSUMPTION DISSOLVING PULP AND PAPER AND PAPERBOARD, 1960-62¹ AND ESTIMATED 1975

¹ Figures for 1960-62 are estimated average total annual consumption. Where recorded consumption is significantly different it is shown in brackets. For an explanation of the differences, see the Appendix - ² Refers to growth in recorded consumption. - ³ Includes paper wad paperboard imported in the from of manufactured articles, which account for a considerable part of total consumption in these regions.

ANNEX TABLE II-E. - CONSUMPTION OF ROUNDWOOD AND FUELWOOD 1960-62 AND ESTIMATED 1975

¹ Figures for 1960-62 are estimated average total annual consumption. Where recorded consumption is significantly different it is shown in brackets. For an explanation of the differences, see the Appendix. - ² Refers to growth in recorded consumption.