An assessment of the industrial markets for softwood clearwood lumber

The purpose of this project was to assess market opportunities for second-growth clearwood lumber by identifying industry segments that currently utilize clearwood lumber and determining whether alternative markets will continue to exist for clearwood lumber produced from intensively managed forests in the Pacific Northwest. A survey of industrial lumber remanufacturers was conducted in 1995 to identify: 1) those industry segments that currently utilize clearwood lumber as a raw material input for their manufacturing process; and 2) those clearwood lumber attributes that are perceived to be important by managers within specific segments of the remanufacturing industry. Frequencies and mean responses were used to analyze the demographic information as well as the softwood lumber attribute ratings. A factor analysis was used to reduce the original 16 lumber attributes to 4 factors: timber quality, manufacturing properties, mechanical properties, and economic/price characteristics. A perceptual map of the survey results indicates that managers in the door and windows industries attached more importance to timber quality an manufacturing properties when purchasing softwood lumber than did managers in the other industry segments. Respondents in the wood remanufacturing industry appeared to value reliability of supply, price, and price stability over other softwood lumber attributes. This would seem to indicate that these manufacturers could not, or would not, continue to accept higher relative prices and rapid price fluctuations for clearwood softwood lumber.

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