by Web Editor | Feb 17, 2016 | News
A new kind of engineered lumber is being tested at the University of Maine. This new “plywood on steroids” could compete with other construction materials like concrete and steel, and this new industry may help add value back into Maine’s forests.
“It would be a new market, it would be a new factory, sort of like making furniture, except it’s really big pieces,” said Steve Shaler, director of the School of Forest Resources at UMaine.
The new market would be for cross laminated timber, an engineered plywood created and tested at the University of Maine. CLT is made with different types of wood from Maine’s forests. It’s then pressed into a strong construction material, ready to use at construction sites.
“They come out as large panels, solid panels with windows and door openings pre-cut, maybe utility locations pre-cut, and they’re swung into place and connected together and they go up very very quickly with very little cutting on site, very little waste on site,” said Bill Davids, professor and chair of the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering.
“This is for taller structures, four stories, 10, there are buildings now that are made out of wood that are 10 stories tall,” said Shaler. The blocks of spruce, pine and fir were stress tested and broken under 10,000 pounds of force, which is stronger than normal lumber, but lighter than other building materials like steel and concrete.
From WCSH 6 News: https://www.wcsh6.com/news/plywood-on-steroids-changes-lumber-industry/41656511
by Web Editor | Feb 10, 2016 | News
Last month we saw cross-laminated timbers installed at the Albina Yard project in Portland. It was the first use of U.S.-produced CLT in a building-wide structural system.
The first level of CLT (4,000 square feet) on Albina Yard went up in fewer than four hours. Last week, the second level was installed by a crew of seven in under two hours. Pretty remarkable, considering the contractor says it would have taken at least twice as many people two days or more to frame the same amount of floor space using traditional methods. Albina Yard is a four-story, 16,000-square-foot creative office project in north Portland. Besides its snazzy design by LEVER Architecture, the project is most notable for being tangible evidence that the U.S. CLT industry is officially off the ground.
There’s been a lot of buzz around CLT and mass timber in general over the past several months in Oregon and around the country — and rightly so. Besides drastically improved speed of construction (and the savings that go with that), mass timber offers significant environmental benefits. This includes tremendous carbon-storing capacity. Half the dry weight of wood is carbon. It got there when the trees were growing and absorbing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. That carbon remains locked up for as long as the wood remains in use (a nine-story wood structure in China is now 959 years old—nearly a millennium). The new trees planted to replace those that were harvested start the carbon cycle all over again.
According to a quick, back-of-the-napkin calculation, Albina Yard, which is small by commercial construction standards, stores about 80.5 metric tons of carbon. That’s equivalent to offsetting 295 metric tons of CO2 emissions.
A larger Portland mass timber building, Clay Creative (60,000 square feet), stores more than 1 million pounds of carbon. Its total of 457.5 metric tons offsets 1,678 metric tons of CO2 emissions. “An additional 3,574 metric tons of CO2 emissions were avoided by using wood rather than concrete and steel,” says Dr. Jim Bowyer, an expert on the subject at Dovetail Partners, Inc.
From the Oregon Forest Resources Institute: https://oregonforests.org/blog/mass-timber-rising
by Web Editor | Feb 3, 2016 | News
Norbord To Invest $135 Million In Scotland OSB Mill
Canadian firm Norbord has announced plans to invest £95m at its wood panels plant in the Highlands. It aims to double production at its base in Dalcross, near Inverness, to meet rising demand. Highlands and Islands Enterprise has also offered an £11m grant towards the proposed expansion. The factory produces oriented strand boards (OSB) which are used in the construction industry.
Alex Paterson, chief executive of Highlands and Islands Enterprise said: “We have been working very closely with Norbord on their development plans and are delighted to be supporting the company to invest so substantially in its Highland base.
“This development will put Norbord’s Inverness plant on a sustainable footing for decades to come, and is a huge vote of confidence in the company’s Scottish workforce.
“It’s worth noting that the positive impact of today’s announcement will be felt well beyond Inverness and the Inner Moray Firth. “Norbord is not only a significant local employer in its own right, it also plays an important strategic role in the region’s forestry sector and is a major user of haulage companies and port infrastructure.”
From STV News: news.stv.tv
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by Web Editor | Jan 27, 2016 | News
A plywood and veneer mill being built in Springfield will provide 200 full-time jobs once fully operational.
Glendale, Oregon-based Swanson Group is building the new mill on the site of its former facility, which burned in a 2014 fire. According to information from the company, total costs, including permitting, construction and equipment, could exceed $55 million.
While the plant is expected to be up and running in April, it likely won’t reach full capacity until August. The new mill will be roughly 345,000 square feet, located at 1651 S F St., according to company spokesperson Cameron Stewart.
Several factors pushed the company to rebuild rather than lease a different facility, including Springfield’s “proven and dedicated workforce” and its nearby timber sources, according to Stewart.
When at full capacity, the plant will produce about 20 million square feet of veneer each month, which will be turned into 10 to 12 million square feet of plywood products. Annually, it will produce some 120 million square feet of finished plywood products.
From the Portland Business Journal: https://www.bizjournals.com/portland/blog/sbo/2016/01/springfield-plywood-mill-rises-from-ashes-will.html
by Web Editor | Jan 25, 2016 | News
Demand For Engineered Wood Products To Grow Through 2020
Engineered wood product output will grow between 25% and 33% by 2020, according to the Fall 2015 Forecast by APA – The Engineered Wood Association. That should bode well for LBM dealers as the housing market continues its gradual recovery.
APA’s 2015-2020 Market Outlook for structural panels and engineered wood products forecasts that demand for North American-made structural panels will increase 21% by 2020, from 31.5 billion square feet to 38 billion, largely in response the increase in housing starts to 1.5 million units by the end of the decade.
APA’s forecast for an uptick in demand for structural panels and engineered wood doesn’t surprise J.D. Saunders, the 2014-2015 chairman of the National Lumber and Building Material Dealers Association (NLBMDA) and vice president of Economy Lumber in Campbell, Calif. “We’ve already experienced an increase in demand, and part of that is attributable to the recovery of the housing market,” he says.
In fact, APA’s Market Outlook notes that although the U.S. homeownership rate is expected to trend lower through 2020 as interest rates rise, the improving economy could push household growth as high as 1.3 million per year over the next three to five years.
Several factors are dampening the potential for stronger growth in homebuilding. Young would-be homeowners are delaying marriage as they pay off historically high levels of student debt and their projected incomes are unlikely to keep pace with the rise in mortgage payments as home prices and interest rates rise. In addition, first-time home-buyers continue to struggle to meet strict mortgage lending standards to qualify for home loans. Many of the households they form in the near future are likely to be living in rented apartments, as described in the APA report.
From LBM Journal: lbmjournal.com.
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The monthly Panel World Industry Newsletter reaches over 3,000 who represent primary panel production operations.
Panel World is delivered six times per year to North American and international professionals, who represent primary panel production operations. Subscriptions are FREE to qualified individuals.
Complete the online form so we can direct you to the appropriate Sales Representative. Contact us today!
by Web Editor | Jan 22, 2016 | News
The U.S. Census Bureau & the Department of Housing & Urban Development released its December and total 2015 statistics on new residential starts in the U.S. There were no real surprises with the data, but predicting U.S. housing starts has been virtually impossible for analysts and economists.
WOOD MARKETS has conducted its own U.S. housing forecasts since 2007 when about that time, consensus forecasts became wildly inaccurate. Since then, WOOD MARKETS has repeatedly highlighted that a structural change has been occurring in the U.S. housing market and the use of traditional economic models will not work until much later in the cycle. As a result, WOOD MARKETS own housing forecasts have been decidedly more conservative as compared to all other economists’ forecasts. Since 2007, our housing and supply/demand forecasts have been much closer to the actual results as compared to the many dozens of professional economists and modelers.
The key take-away message is this: The Consensus forecasts continue to be too high – with some being way off the charts. For those that use housing forecasts in their business plans, using the consensus forecasts in 2014 of 770,000 single family housing starts would have resulted in forecasts of almost 2 billion board feet of extra lumber demand. This type of forecasted demand increase would have suggested a much tighter supply and demand balance, where higher lumber price forecasts could be another one of the wrong predictions.
And WOOD MARKETS’ U.S. housing forecast for 2016 (in WOOD MARKETS 2016) is once again lower than the Consensus forecast – no surprise here. And our consultants have a decidedly conservative tone to North America and Chinese demand as well as prices for 2016 – all predicted before any signs of the current global economic volatility started.
From International Wood Markets: https://www.woodmarkets.com/forecasters-struggle-for-accuracy-as-u-s-housing-starts-grew-steadily-in-2015/
