Production of interior finishing lumber stopped declining since 2011 on both solid wood and veneer overlay lumber then in 2014, solid wood decorative lumber increased.
The demand expands as construction of large buildings increased and decorative lumber is heavily used.
Structural lumber recorded the third largest production behind 2006 and 2013. The production did not drop as much as 2014’s housing starts, which dropped by 9%.
However, imported volume in 2014 dropped by 4.4% with 728,000 cbms so total of both imports and domestic production was in proportion to drop of housing starts.
Large sized lumber is used for large buildings, which increased in number then imported products lost competitiveness by weak yen.
Also for medium and large buildings, use of domestic species is encouraged, which pushed the domestic large size lumber production up. Percentage of lamina is 63.3% of European softwood and 24.3% of domestic softwood.
A balance is North American softwood. It looks like share of 60% of European, 30% of domestic and 10% of North American is fixed.
