IV. Securing the Supply and Utilization of Wood Products
1. Utilization of Wood Products
In order to fulfill the multiple roles of forests, proper management of
forests through the utilization of wood products is important.
The number of construction of wooden houses decreased to 520 thousand in
2001. However, the rate of wooden houses to all independent houses was 82%, showing
strong orientation to wooden houses in Japan.
Recently, public facilities, including schools and
post offices, are increasingly constructed with
wood. Further, wood use in public civil engineering projects, including road
construction and forest conservation, is also on the rise. In FY 2001, the volume of thinned wood used
in these projects reached 310 thousand m3, nearly 1.7
times of the volume two years before.
2. Trend of Demand / Supply of Wood Products
In 2001, the demand for wood products (sawn timber) was 91.24 million m3, down by 8.02 million m3 from the
previous year. This is the lowest level since 1983 when the Japanese economy was
in recession due to the slump of demand for detached houses with a high
proportion of wooden houses.
The supply of forest products decreased for both domestic timber and imported
timber in 2001. However, the self-sufficiency rate rose by 0.2 points,
reaching 18.4%.
The price of structural laminated lumber has been rising since June 2002.
This rise is attributed to the increase in the export of European timber
to the United States and the currency appreciation of Euro.
On the other hand, the annual
average price of sawn sugi products is on the decline due to the decrease in
demand, caused by the insufficient supply of dried wood.
3. Challenge for the Establishment of the Secured Supply System of Wood
Products
Currently, the share of dried wood in wood products supply in Japan is
still 13%.
In response to requests for
wood products with reliable quality, that is, to avoid distortion after construction, it is
important to expand the production of dried wood by reducting the drying costs through shortening drying
process with the introduction of high-temperature drying system by using wood residues
at factories as heating materials.
Since the volume of log import has been decreasing due to the limitation
of forest resources in the South-east Asia, the volume of plywood production
has decreased, while the share of coniferous plywood in plywood production
has increased.
Due to the development of
processing machines that can process smaller logs and through utilizing logs
with lower prices, the use of domestic coniferous wood for plywood production
increased by 60% in 2001, compared to the previous year.
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