Plywood
The steady growth of world plywood production since the second world war reported in our previous reviews has continued. Output in 1955 was estimated to be more than three times that in 1946. The main producing regions, Europe, North America and the Soviet Union, showed increases of more than four, three and two-and-a-half times, respectively. The quantitative increase, from 3,180,000 m3 in 1946 to 10,420,000 m3 in 1955, has been largely due to the spectacular growth of the plywood industry in North America and primarily in the United States. North American output was 1,990,000 m³ in 1946 and 6,110,000 m³ in 1955, an increase of over 4 million m³. The corresponding rise for the rest of the world was about 3.1 million m³. Table 1 illustrates the development of plywood production in the world's principal producing regions from 1938 to 1946 and 1955.
TABLE 1. - REGIONAL DISTRIBUTION OF WORLD PLYWOOD PRODUCTION
|
Region
|
1938 |
1946 |
1955 |
|||
|
1000 m³ |
percent |
1000 m³ |
percent |
1000 m³ |
percent |
|
|
Europe |
1 090 |
36 |
480 |
15 |
2 040 |
19 |
|
U. S. S. R. |
885 |
29 |
400 |
12 |
1 070 |
10 |
|
North America |
820 |
27 |
1 990 |
63 |
6 110 |
59 |
|
Japan |
207 |
7 |
67 |
2 |
700 |
7 |
|
Others |
38 |
1 |
243 |
8 |
500 |
5 |
|
TOTAL |
3 040 |
100 |
3 180 |
100 |
10 420 |
100 |
Many factors contributed to the remarkable increase in North American output of plywood; one of the most important is that the war years (1939-45) allowed the industry to expand its capacity and advance its technology, so that, at the end of the war, further progress could be made from this already high level. In contrast, many European plywood mills were destroyed during the war, and postwar progress had to start from low levels. Thus, North American mills, which in 1938 contributed only 27 percent of world production, increased their share to 63 percent in 1946. This share declined to 59 percent in 1955, due to the upsurge of production in other regions. The shares of Europe and the Soviet Union, on the other hand, fell from 36 per cent and 29 percent respectively of world output in 1938 to 19 percent and 10 percent in 1955.
In the years immediately following the war, most of the plywood industries outside North America were concerned with repairing, reconstructing and reopening their plants, and operations were often resumed at the prewar technological level. The modernization of existing factories and the construction of new ones encountered economic difficulties, including necessary diversion of available capital to higher priority reconstruction projects. In North America, however, the plywood industries were intact and productive, and consumer demand was rising. New developments in water-resistant and waterproof gluing increased the versatility of the product, especially in marine uses and building exteriors. Plywood became widely used for residential construction and for rural buildings exposed to weather conditions which would have destroyed the older, non-waterproof glues. Molding and shaping processes using heat and pressure have increased plywood utilization in furniture manufacturing and a variety of other industries. New surfaces, such as grain designs, decals, resin-impregnated overlays, and facings of paper, plastics and metals, have increased the attractiveness and usability, and plywood has gained popularity with interior decorators. Among the plywood uses that have expanded greatly are: exterior plywood for building and marine uses, removable and re-usable form material for concrete, interior walls and subfloors for dwellings, and the "do-it-yourself" home crafts.
The increasing scarcity of high quality peeler logs has forced the North American plywood industry to turn to smaller and lower quality wood, not only for cores and for the reverse side of the panel, but also for the face, where improved machinery has extended the practice of removing knots and replacing them with sound wood. Narrower veneers were utilized and lower quality plywood was "made-do" where higher quality had formerly been used. At the same time, plywood manufacturers have turned to new species of timber to extend the variety of raw material supply. Manufacturing processes have been speeded up and costs held down by new machinery for peeling, slicing, patching, and gluing. Greater economy in utilization of raw materials has been achieved by integrating plywood manufacture with sawmills, paper mills, and factories for chipboards and fibreboards. A great increase has consequently taken place in the use of very thin veneers to cover cores of chipboard, cellulose materials, and wood blocks, which are in many instances manufactured in integrated special plants. Similar developments in technology are also reported from other producing regions.
The increase in plywood production, in North America as well as in other regions, is quantitatively significant, as can be seen from Table 2. The production figures do not show, however, the changes which have taken place in plywood quality, in types of plywood, products such as veneer-coated blackboards, and in the uses being made of these materials. These changes are indeed very important for present and future markets.
Production
The growth in world capacity and production of plywood in the past three years has been concentrated primarily in Europe, North America and Japan (Table 2).
TABLE: 2. - WORLD PRODUCTION OF PLYWOOD
|
Region
|
1946 |
1951 |
1952 |
1953 |
1954 |
1955 |
|
Thousand cubic meters |
||||||
|
Europe |
480 |
1 470 |
1 360 |
1 505 |
1 885 |
2 040 |
|
of which: |
|
|||||
|
Finland |
150 |
314 |
233 |
270 |
346 |
363 |
|
France |
44 |
144 |
144 |
147 |
191 |
226 |
|
Germany, West |
60 |
480 |
419 |
484 |
630 |
649 |
|
Italy |
25 |
140 |
140 |
140 |
150 |
150 |
|
Portugal |
5* |
25 |
30 |
32 |
31 |
40* |
|
Spain |
10* |
30 |
301 |
35 |
40 |
40* |
|
Sweden |
42 |
57 |
50 |
45 |
56 |
60* |
|
United Kingdom, |
38 |
39 |
29 |
341 |
51 |
54 |
|
Yugoslavia |
10 |
22 |
22 |
24 |
36 |
41 |
|
U.S.S.R. |
400* |
850* |
883 |
946 |
1 024 |
1 070* |
|
North America |
1990 |
4 090 |
4 240 |
4 930 |
5 020 |
6 110 |
|
of which: |
|
|||||
|
Canada |
192 |
344 |
351 |
460 |
524 |
611 |
|
United States |
1 800 |
3 750 |
3 890 |
4 470 |
4 500* |
5 500* |
|
Latin America |
145 |
150 |
140 |
160 |
180 |
185 |
|
of which: |
|
|||||
|
Argentina |
20* |
48 |
33 |
29 |
31 |
35* |
|
Brazil |
110 |
67 |
63 |
79 |
93 |
100* |
|
Africa |
15 |
80 |
50 |
80 |
80 |
80 |
|
Asia |
90 |
310 |
415 |
515 |
655 |
830 |
|
of which: |
|
|||||
|
India |
13 |
26 |
34 |
23 |
29 |
35 |
|
Israel |
- |
- |
8 |
11 |
16 |
20 |
|
Japan |
67 |
228 |
298 |
409 |
535 |
700 |
|
Philippines |
- |
23 |
34 |
30 |
40 |
45 |
|
Pacific Area |
58 |
83 |
64 |
81 |
95 |
105 |
|
of which: |
|
|||||
|
Australia |
48 |
68 |
50 |
67 |
81 |
90 |
|
New Zealand |
10 |
15 |
14 |
14 |
14 |
15 |
|
WORLD TOTAL |
3180 |
7 030 |
7 150 |
8 220 |
8 940 |
10 420 |
Note: Regional and world totals include some country estimates.
No estimate is available for China
* Estimated figures.
It emerges rather clearly from the figures available that capacity and production have shown a steady and continuous increase only in those countries where domestic demand is sufficient to justify a rise in the country's manufacturing capacity and where export possibilities play only a minor or insignificant role. A comparison of production with foreign trade figures (Table 3) demonstrates this point.
The plywood producing countries of the world can be classified into four main groups. The first group consists of those countries where foreign trade plays practically no role in the country's supplies or production. Typical of this group are the United States, the Soviet Union,1 Italy, Western Germany and Canada.1 The second group is composed of countries which export the bulk or all of their production. This group includes Finland and the countries of Africa and Latin America where plywood industries have been established primarily to meet the needs of European or other overseas countries. The third group of countries comprises those which import all or a substantial part of their requirements. Included here are both the countries which import more than they produce and those which have no production. The United Kingdom, Belgium, Denmark, Greece, and the Netherlands belong to this third group. Finally, in the fourth group are the countries which are fairly self-sufficient in plywood production but export or import special categories.
1 Though substantial suppliers to Western Europe, the U.S.S.R. and Canada still export only a small proportion of their plywood production. industries have started looking for export possibilities, mostly in the neighboring countries in the same region, and this development forcibly leads to diminishing imports from more remote sources.
Japan can be considered to be in a special class, somewhere between the first and second group. Japan's production and domestic consumption have increased substantially during recent years. At the same time exports have also increased so that Japan has become the world's second largest plywood exporter.
The differences in the rates of increase in plywood production in the various regions and countries of the world can, against the above background, be rather easily understood. Countries belonging to the first group have so far enjoyed continuous economic expansion, demand for plywood has risen appreciably and there has been a steady increase in domestic manufacturing capacity. The second group, on the other hand, has apparently not markedly increased its production capacity during the past three or four years, the volume of production having fluctuated primarily because of changing export demand. In the countries belonging to the third and fourth groups there has been, on the whole, a modest increase in production, although new industries have emerged in some countries where no plywood was produced earlier. This last development has consequences for the plywood industries in the major plywood exporting countries, since the large majority of importing countries import plywood in relatively small quantities. Thus the construction of even a modest plywood factory immediately leads to a sharp reduction in import needs. Past experience shows that many plywood factories established in Latin America, Africa and parts of Asia, even though of low capacity, have been capable of producing more than required by domestic markets. Consequently, these
A review of the present plywood production situation in the world would be incomplete without mention of the considerable expansion of veneer industries (often distinct from plywood factories) in the tropical hardwood regions and in the main plywood importing countries, notably in the United Kingdom. Although comprehensive production statistics on veneers are unavailable, the reported increases in output, together with the increases in hard fibreboard and chipboard production, represent more competition for plywoods, particularly for use in furniture industries.
Trade
The postwar recovery and further development of world trade in plywood (Table 3) appears very modest indeed when compared with the remarkable increase in world production. The volume of plywood exports had gradually risen from 380,000 m3 in 1946 to 640,000 m³ in 1951 and had regained the level reached immediately before the second world war. The heavy fall in the demand for all forest products in 1952 affected also the international trade in plywood, which fell sharply to 470,000 m³. The slump still affected trade in 1953, when the volume of plywood exports was only 500,000 m3. It was only in 1954 that demand revived and the international plywood market again stood on a firmer basis.
A considerable change has taken place in the regional distribution of world exports during the period l946-1955. In 1946 and 1947, Finland and North America held roughly equal shares, accounting between them for the bulk of all plywood exported. During the period from 1948 to 1953, Finland alone had about half the world's total plywood exports, with North and Latin-American exports gradually declining and those of Japan and the Soviet Union increasing. This was the situation in 1964 when the import demand suddenly increased, particularly from the United Kingdom and the United States, and led for the first time to a volume of trade exceeding that of prewar, namely 790,000 m³. Finland increased its plywood exports by 83,000 m³. from 1953 and Japan by as much as 107,000 m3. In 1955, the demand further strengthened, and world exports of plywood are estimated to have reached some 930,000 ma. The increase in exports by Japan, from 165,000 m3 in 1954 to an estimated 230,000 ma in 1955, while production rose by 165,000 ma from 1954 to 1955, was particularly interesting. Toward the end of 1955, however, the unusually heavy volume of exports in both 1954 and 1955 began to weigh on the market and the opening of the export/import campaign for 1956 was marked by great caution on the part of the importers. In the first months of 1956, it became apparent that the international demand for plywood would be considerably lower than in the preceding years. These developments had their immediate bearing in the main exporting countries, notably in Finland, which normally exports 85 percent of its total production. The Finnish plywood industry planned to cut its production by 20 to 30 percent from the 1955 level and some factories even closed down temporarily. At the time of writing this review, the export market for 1956 was still rather weak and future projects uncertain.
TABLE 3. - WORLD TRADE IN PLYWOOD
On the importing side, the regional distribution of world plywood trade changed much less in the period from 1946 to 1956. Europe, and particularly the United Kingdom, were the most important buyers, although in 1964 and 1965 the United States appeared as a signifcant client, notably for Japanese plywood. By and large, it can be said that the development of import demand for plywood in the world has been governed year after year by the purchasing policy of the United Kingdom. Regions outside Europe and North America, which in the prewar period represented some 20 to 26 percent of the total import demand in the world, today represent only about 10 percent. The actual volume of imports by these regions has fallen from some 140,000 to 160,000 m3 in the prewar period to 70,000 to 80,000 m3 today. This development confirms the comment earlier in this article concerning the effect on international trade of the wartime or postwar creation of plywood industries in these regions.
|
Period
|
Finnish
|
United Kingdom imports of plywood |
Swedish
|
|
|
Birch |
Others |
|||
|
1950 January |
100 |
100 |
100 |
100 |
|
April |
97 |
101 |
100 |
110 |
|
July |
95 |
95 |
92 |
117 |
|
October |
96 |
94 |
89 |
127 |
|
1951 January |
101 |
94 |
87 |
165 |
|
April |
104 |
96 |
95 |
187 |
|
July |
120 |
111 |
104 |
191 |
|
October |
123 |
117 |
113 |
193 |
|
1952 January |
127 |
1 130 |
130 |
202 |
|
April |
119 |
123 |
129 |
187 |
|
July |
116 |
124 |
126 |
142 |
|
October |
108 |
124 |
123 |
161 |
|
1953 January |
102 |
120 |
123 |
169 |
|
April |
95 |
117 |
113 |
169 |
|
July |
102 |
112 |
104 |
168 |
|
October |
106 |
111 |
105 |
169 |
|
1954 January |
116 |
95 |
103 |
176 |
|
April |
116 |
113 |
101 |
173 |
|
July |
120 |
117 |
103 |
176 |
|
October |
123 |
119 |
104 |
181 |
|
1955 January |
127 |
131 |
108 |
186 |
|
April |
129 |
133 |
107 |
189 |
|
July |
130 |
132 |
107 |
189 |
|
October |
129 |
132 |
107 |
185 |
The volume of world trade in plywood has, after the 1946/46 drop to about half the 1938 level, gradually regained and then exceeded this level by one fourth. At the same time, however, world production and consumption, as already mentioned, increased by about three-and-a-half times. The international trade, therefore, represents a progressively diminishing share of total world production. Whether the present volume of plywood exports and imports is to be maintained in the years to come will depend largely on the competitive power of present export plywood industries in the face of the continuous growth of manufacturing capacity in hitherto less developed regions and countries. It is obvious that, to be fully competitive in regions where domestic production of plywood tends to suppress the import needs, the exporting countries will have to pay increasing attention to the quality and variety of their products, to sponsor new uses, and, finally, to follow attentively developments - economic and technical - in other regions. The plywood market today is very different from that of prewar, when a stable use pattern and a steady volume of trade could be taken for granted.
Prices
A study of plywood price movements for recent years reveals many interesting features. During the period from 1950 to 1965, export prices of plywood increased only 6 to 20 percent, depending on the quality and category, while international prices of most other forest products roughly doubled. The average c.i.f. price of plywood imported by the United Kingdom, compared with the Swedish export prices (f.o.b.) for sawn softwood, illustrates well the great difference in the price movements of these two important forest products.
Although average f.o.b. or c.i.f. values do not show actual changes in price quotations because of time lags between closing of contracts and shipment of goods, the figures in Table 4 do provide an indication of longer term price developments. The most striking feature is the relatively great rise of prices of birch plywood, i.e., plywood exported chiefly by Finland and the U.S.S.R. It is to be expected that with the continuous introduction of new categories, varieties and species of other plywoods on the international market, at prices relatively lower than those of birch plywood, the position of the latter will suffer in the long run. The share of other plywoods in international trade has in fact been steadily growing in the past years.
Conclusion
During the postwar period and particularly in the past few years the plywood industry has entered into a new phase greatly different from the earlier pattern. Technological progress in plywood manufacture has opened many new fields of utilization. Present technological achievements do not represent the utmost perfection in plywood manufacture. On the contrary, there is every reason to look forward with optimism to continued progress. Countries without forest industries will direct increasing attention to better utilization of their forest resources, and plywood and veneer manufacturing will certainly have an important part in development programs. On the other hand, already existing industries in the economically more developed regions and countries are sure to take advantage of continuous progress in wood technology, some of which will stem from research in the field of plywood manufacture.
Parallel with the progress in further development of the plywood industry and manufacturing methods, progress in other fields of general economy and industry will no doubt continue to find new uses for better and more varieties of plywood. Thus the manufacture of plywood as such, although not one of the most recent techniques in wood processing, is by no means an industry of the past which has lived its time. The future may therefore still have many surprises reserved for the utilization of, and demand for, plywood and its corollary products.
E. K.
