A Statistical Tour of the Wood Panels Industry
An article by Malcolm Cowley , C.M.I.W.Sc, Willamette Europe Ltd, Chairman, National Panel Products Division, Timber Trade Federation, published in TRADA Timber Industry Yearbook 2001
Notwithstanding the fact that the earliest known reference to the production of a wood based panel product was hand made plywood in Egypt, circa 2000 BC, the development of this important element within the timber industry has been a phenomenon primarily of the 20th Century.
The first fibreboard in the world was produced at Sunbury-on-Thames in 1898, with the first rotary peeled veneer plywood emanating from Estonia in 1896. Other milestones in the Wood Panels Industry were the introduction of Softboard (formerly known as Insulating Board) in Germany, 1914; Hardboard, USA, 1925; Particleboard, Germany, 1941; Dry Process Fibreboard, USA, 1945; Medium Density Fibreboard (MDF), USA, 1966, and Oriented Strand Board (OSB), Germany, 1969.
From these humble beginnings, global capacity of the major wood based panels industry attained in excess of 160 million m3 of product capacity by the end of the Millennium. Plywood and Particleboard were around 50/60 million m3 each and OSB and MDF at around 25 million m3 each.(See Table 1).
Table 1. Global Wood Panel Industry.
| | Production - 2000 |
Plywood | 54 Million m3 approx. |
Particleboard | 61 Million m3 approx. |
MDF | 25 Million m3 approx. |
OSB | 23 Million m3 approx. |
Plywood plants have been closing, particularly in the United States, as costs per unit have steadily risen, coupled with the burgeoning new volumes of OSB production now available at lower unit cost. North American OSB production rose from just under 9 million m3 in 1990 to an estimated 21.5 million m3 by the end of 2001, whilst North American Plywood production fell over the same period from 23.6 million m3 to under 18 million m3. North American OSB capacity overtook plywood capacity in 1999 (Source APA March 1999).
Despite the pressure on plywood from OSB, it can be seen that softwood plywood has proven to be reasonably resilient in North America. This can be attributed to the buoyant US market and growth in consuming sectors of wood based panels over the latter part of the decade. Wooden housing construction, in particular, using large volumes of structural wood panels, has contributed significantly to both the high consumption of softwood plywood and the rapidly evolving consumption of OSB in North America since the early 1980’s.
In Europe, the first OSB plant was built in Inverness (UK) in 1985, followed by France (1986) and in the mid to late nineties with plants in Ireland, Luxembourg and Poland. A new plant came on stream in France early 2000 and there is the expectation of several plant starts in Germany and Belgium in 2001 and beyond. The rather more sluggish development of OSB production in Europe in comparison to North America has been due to the lower volumes of housing construction utilising structural wood panels. Major uses for OSB, apart from Timber Frame Housing panels for walls, floors and roofing, has been packaging, furniture frames, and building site hoardings.
The combination of existing OSB facilities in Europe, is expected to bring total production capacity to around 1.4 million m3 by the end of 2000. The possibility is, that if all announced investments were to take place, some of which are not yet confirmed at the time of writing, then capacity could rise to just under 4 million m3 in Europe by 2004.
OSB, having begun to dominate the North American market, has now stretched its tentacles into Europe, but what of other elements on the Global Plywood market?
Global Plywood Production
The most significant plywood-producing region globally is Asia with over 28 million m3 of production. This region is dominated by Indonesia at 10 million m3 , closely followed by China at 8 million m3, then Malaysia with slightly over 4 million m3. North America comes next with 18 million m3, followed by Europe at just under 5 million m3.
South America, dominated by Brazil with 2 million m3, comes next with 2.5 million m3. Africa chips in 450,000m3, with its major production coming from Nigeria (72,000m3) and The Ivory Coast (61,000m3), followed by Oceania with 360,000m3, 55% of which is produced by New Zealand, who imports about the same volume as it exports.
Surprisingly, Asia exports 14 million m3, but still finds the opportunity to import 11.5 million m3. Perhaps not surprisingly Indonesia imports little or no plywood. The major nett importers into the Asian region are led by Japan and China. China has a production of 8 million m3 and imports a further 2.5 million m3, exporting very little at 760,000m3.
The European region produces 4.8 million m3, imports about the same, and exports 3.1 million m3. Germany and the UK vie with each other year by year as to who imports the most volume. They are both generally around the 1 million m3 mark. However, German production of plywood is considerably larger than UK with 392,000m3 versus 5,000m3.
Production capacities are one thing, but where are the largest global markets for plywood consumption?
A league table of the top ten consumers of plywood would look like Table 2, after balancing imports against exports with domestic production:-
Table 2 Global Plywood Consumers (millions m3) (Blockboard excluded): Plywood Consumption by Country *rounded to one decimal
Country | Production | Import | Export | Apparent Consumption* |
1. USA | 15.7 | 1.90 | 1.60 | 16.0 |
2. China | 8.1 | 2.50 | 0.80 | 9.8 |
3. Japan | 3.8 | 5.40 | 0.01 | 9.2 |
4. Canada | 1.8 | 0.43 | 0.86 | 1.4 |
5. Brazil | 1.9 |
| 0.58 | 1.3 |
6. Germany | 0.4 | 1.08 | 0.14 | 1.3 |
7. UK |
| 0.95 | 0.02 | 0.9 |
8. France | 0.6 | 0.36 | 0.22 | 0.7 |
9. Italy | 0.4 | 0.31 | 0.12 | 0.6 |
10. Netherlands |
| 0.47 | 0.05 | 0.4 |
It could be argued that it is flawed to compare, for example, USA with individual EU countries. Would it be a fairer representation to compare all the EU with North America etc? My point is to identify that the UK, regardless of this, is a credible 7th in the Global Plywood Consumption Table, emphasising its importance as a significant World Plywood user.
