Sabah Timber Industries Association (STIA) said the timber industry here is facing a shortage of raw material due to over logging in the past and lack of sustainable forest management program.
In a statement yesterday in conjunction with this year’s Chinese New Year celebration, STIA president Datuk James Hwong said the critical situation has forced STIA members to depend on other means to sustain the industry.
Maine Governor Paul LePage signed an executive order directing that “any new or expanded state buildings shall incorporate green building standards that give certification credits equally to forest products grown, manufactured and certified under the Sustainable Forestry Initiative Standard, Forest Stewardship Council, American Tree Farm System and Programme for the Endorsement of Forest Certification systems.”
ICTORIA - The B.C. government says lumber exports to China have gone through the roof.
It says in the first 11 months of last year, the province had shipped 4.2 billion board feet of lumber to China, exceeding a goal of four billion set four years ago.
Exports are up 200 per cent from 2009, and their value has hit more than one billion dollars.
Jobs Minister Pat Bell calls the numbers astounding, saying about two dozen sawmills across B.C. have re-opened or added shifts partly because of the boost in exports to China.
Södra reduced the price of its softwood pulp timber by SEK 25 per m3sub. This price reduction is also applicable to the pulp timber element of its storm range. The price of all hardwood pulp timber ranges will remain unchanged for the time being, however.
"This price reduction is a reaction to the prevailing demand, and there is plenty of raw material available at all Södra pulp mills," said Håkan Svensson, Director of Forestry at Södra.
New regulations banning sale of illegal timber in consumer countries will force companies to move away from business-as-usual practices, part of a two-pronged approach to ensure the sustainability of supply for wood products.
VTT Technical Research Centre and Aalto University have developed a method which for the first time enables manufacturing of a wood-based and plastic-like material in large scale. The method enables industrial scale roll-to-roll production of nanofibrillated cellulose film, which is suitable for e.g. food packaging to protect products from spoilage.
With weaker demand for lumber around the world, sawlog prices fell in a majority of the 21 markets tracked by the Wood Resource Quarterly (WRQ). The Global Conifer Sawlog Price Index (GSPI) declined in the 3Q for the first time since the 1Q/09.
With a few exceptions, prices fell in both local currencies and in US dollar terms. The only region that saw any substantial price increase in the 3Q was British Columbia, where prices were up 5-7 percent from the 2Q. This region has benefited from higher lumber exports and production has gone up during 2011.
Over the past few decades, tropical timber production in many Asia–Pacific countries has been akin to the symmetric logistic distribution curve, or ‘Hubbert Curve’, observed in the exploitation of many non-renewable resources—a rapid increase in production followed by a peak and then decline.
Forest machine manufacturer Komatsu Forest has signed a major deal with the new Brazilian pulp mill Eldorado Brasil in the state of Mato Grosso do Sul. In its entirety, the contract is worth about 1.4 billion Swedish kronor (US$ 200 million).
If you prefer to read from paper instead of an electronic screen, you're not alone. According to a recent survey commissioned by Two Sides, the fast-growing non-profit organization created to promote the responsible production, use and sustainability of print and paper, 70 percent of Americans, including 69 percent of 18- to 24-year-olds, say they prefer to read print and paper communications compared to reading off a screen.
