|
|
WoodPro Information |
Key Links |
Industry Information |
Miscellaneous Features |
|
|
|||
Programs and Short Course Announcements |
|||
 |
|||
 |
|||
|
|
 |
||
 |
|||
|
|
|||
An Extension and Outreach program of The Pennsylvania State University |
|||
Feature articles
The American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009 (ACESA), which passed the U.S. House of Representatives on June 26, 2009, would affect all sectors of the economy and create both opportunities and challenges. House Bill 2454 – popularly known as the Waxman-Markey bill – would require reductions of U.S. greenhouse gas emissions through a mix of regulatory and market-based initiatives and incentives. Senate passage remains uncertain, but President Obama is strongly committed to ACESA, and many regarded the House as the chamber less likely to approve climate legislation. (It did so narrowly, 219-212.)
-Ballard Spahr Andrews & Ingersoll, LLP
If You Hug the Trees, Can You Have More Renewable Energy and Protect the Forest? (6-16-09)
Without looser restrictions, some fear that renewable fuel and electricity mandates may be harder to meet. That argument is especially strong in the Southeast, which has wide swaths of forests but is poor in other renewable resources like wind and solar.
But environmentalists oppose easing restrictions on forests, arguing that natural forest habitats could wind up being harvested or thinned with too much enthusiasm or even undergo wholesale conversion to tree farms.
Add into the mix the interests of forest landowners suffering from the economic slump, who need income to justify keeping their lands out of developers' hands, along with those of pulp and paper companies that fear rising raw material prices, and the issue becomes even more muddied.
- NY Times
“The United States is taking this action today to enforce our rights under the Softwood Lumber Agreement,” said U.S. Trade Representative Ronald Kirk. “We regret that Canada has chosen not to meet its commitments and has made this action necessary. The Softwood Lumber Agreement brought more stability and certainty to an industry that sorely needed it. Current conditions – extremely weak demand and severely depressed prices for the softwood lumber industry – only make it clearer that Canada needs to fulfill its obligations under the Agreement and not continue to avoid the market consequences of its earlier breach.”
- Office of the United States Trade Representative
In New Era, Timber’s Struggles Stir Broad Concern and Support (12-8-08)
The years of experience as the industry faded around much of the West — mainly as a result of reduced timber sales in the national forests — has also given people here in Montana a glimpse of what can happen when an industry does go away. In Arizona, Colorado and New Mexico, for example, once-formidable forest industries have all but disappeared over the last decade, leading to higher costs for forest management and fire protection; a recent study at the University of Montana said that forest costs to taxpayers and landowners could quadruple in Montana in coming years if the industry is lost.
- The New York Times
The weak U.S. economy, high-priced inputs and low-priced imports have forced many U.S. pulp and paper mills to downsize or close. At one time, transforming these mills into biorefineries looked to be a promising approach. Is the biorefinery still a viable concept that can save aging pulp and paper mills?
-Biomass Magazine
Management Decisions in the Forest Products Industry: Where Good Companies Go Astray (10-08)
As the broad forest products industry faces a multitude of challenges to its continued survival, there has perhaps never been a more critical time for industry leaders to work on making better decisions.
- Forest Products Journal
Change Blows on the Hardwood Industry Winds (6-1-08)
At the turn of the century a massive movement of the hardwood furniture industry from North America to the Pacific Rim, particularly China, relocated many furniture factories across the Pacific. But the companies that had been in the United States typically have not bought the same quantities of hardwood lumber to manufacture their furniture now that they have relocated. To a great extent, they are building furniture using different wood and material sources than North American hardwoods. Hardwood log exports to the Orient have increased, but there has been a significant decrease in the overall production of North American hardwood mills due to the great drop in demand for higher grade hardwood lumber.
- Pallet Enterprise
Environmental Effects of Increased Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide
A review of the research literature concerning the environmental
consequences of increased levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide leads to the
conclusion that increases during the
20th and early 21st centuries have produced no deleterious effects upon Earth’s
weather and climate. Increased carbon dioxide has, however, markedly increased
plant growth. Predictions
of harmful climatic effects due to future increases in hydrocarbon use and minor
green house gases like CO2 do not conform to current experimental knowledge.
The environmental effects of
rapid expansion of the nuclear and hydrocarbon energy industries are discussed.
- Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons
In northern Louisiana, ecologists are creating a new forest — one Beetle at a time. In a floodplain known as the Lower Mississippi Alluvial Valley, nearly 250,000 trees are being planted by a not-for-profit group called Carbonfund.org. Funding for the massive project, however, is coming from a decidedly for-profit outfit: Volkswagen of America.
- CFO Magazine
Wood Products Council Targets Commercial Markets
The best estimates are that with a $6.5 million per year investment over 10 years there is reasonable expectation that annual demand for lumber and engineered wood can be increased by almost 3 billion bd. ft., and that annual demand for plywood and OSB can be increased by almost 2 billion sq. ft.
-Building-Products.com
The Canadian Lumber Industry: Recent Trends
Faced with various trade and economic pressures during recent years, Canada’s lumber industry has restructured and remained profitable. As part of its restructuring, the industry lost thousands of jobs which produced substantial gains in productivity. These gains have helped it maintain positive profit margins somewhat comparable, on average, to those reported in the manufacturing sector during the 1999 to 2005 period.
- Statistics Canada
Canadian Forest Products Industry Releases Task Force Report on Future of the Industry (5-8-07)
"The Canadian forest products industry faces a very fundamental choice," said Avrim Lazar, President and CEO of FPAC. "Either we continue on the current path and face a future of diminishing possibilities or we accept the reality of a changed global environment and strive for the opportunities that it offers. While it is industry's job to change by becoming more cost competitive, focusing on investment, getting the industry structure right and adopting a future orientation, governments must get the conditions right."
- CNW Group
Made, but not logged, in China (12-24-06)
Night and day, the timber ships reach this Yangtze River port, one of the world's busiest clearinghouses for logs from every corner of the globe: Southeast Asia, the Amazon, Russia, the Congo.
Soon, this wood will be yours.
It will be your hardwood floor and your coffee table, your bedroom dresser and your plywood -- all stamped with the most successful label of our time: Made in China.
- The Chicago Tribune
Could Asia Overtake the U.S. Homebuilding Industry by 2015?
“The Asianization of American homebuilding began back in 2010 when ‘lean manufacturing’ innovator Quadrant Homes of Seattle was purchased by then-unknown CASA Ltd. of China. Over the last five years, CASA, the now-legendary consortium led by the Chinese appliance manufacturing giant Haier, together with the largest banks of Singapore, Hong Kong, Brazil, and Mexico, has become the biggest brand success story since Google. Since then, CASA has bought up other U.S. homebuilders, especially those with Sun Belt land holdings. As of last week, with its purchase of top-rated Centex Homes of Dallas and San Francisco-based BMHC, leading provider of residential construction services and building materials, CASA now owns 30 percent of the U.S. homebuilding market.”
- California Builder Magazine
Domestic furniture loyalty losing ground (2-25-06)
A decade ago, imports made up less than a third of all-wood furniture sales in the U.S. They are now at about 55 percent, and industry analyst Jerry Epperson predicts they will rise again this year to nearly two-thirds of all-wood furniture sales. Last year, about 75 percent of all furniture sold in the U.S. was produced overseas.
- commercialappeal.com
Seven manufacturing challenges for the next ten years.
-IIE Magazine
Sawmills on the West Coast of the United States are the most profitable in the world, with 2004 earnings at average mills almost three times greater than the overall global average earnings.
- Price Waterhouse Coopers
Over the last five years or so, headlines highlighting plant closings and overseas exporting have dominated the woodworking industry. But out of the thicket of negative PR, buds of optimistic new construction projects are blooming toward a brighter day.
- Wood & Wood Products
The best of times, the worst of times
The fate of our industry now lies in the leadership decisions of the next years, the next months, even the coming weeks. In 2015, will we in the American wood products industry be reporting the best of times, or the worst of times?
-WoodPro TechNote 2005-1
*****************************************************************************************************
This page was last updated on July 3, 2009
US Forest Service Wood Products Resources
