WOOD FOR THOUGHT
Demand for softwood in SA decreases
One would think that South Africa ’ s acute shortage of housing will be enough to stimulate demand for alternative building materials like timber and timber-related products . However , it seems that the opposite is true . Demand for timber , and especially for softwood sawlogs , has in fact decreased since the 1990s .
A sad state of affairs despite the valiant efforts by the Department of Trade , Industry and competition and a number of role players in the timber industry . South Africa should be a growing market for timber housing – however , it does seem that a lack of proper marketing and foresight has resulted in a dearth of knowledge and education about the benefits of timber buildings .
In the August issue of Timber iQ , Schalk Grobbelaar from the University of Pretoria gives great insight into the current state of the South African timber market . According to Grobbelaar , South Africa produces approximately 2 million cubic metres of softwood lumber per annum . This constitutes less than 0.6 % of the world ' s production . To put it into perspective , the two largest sawmills in the world , Klausner Holz Thüringen ( Germany ) and Wismar Sawmill ( Germany ), produce 2,4 million cubic metres of sawn wood between them per annum . substantially since the mid-1990s . “ Policies promoting the development of new plantations should be considered , but this should not be regarded as the primary constraint of the industry ,” he adds .
“ The lack of growth in the industry can be attributed to many aspects , but a specific concern is that South Africans only use 0.0319m 3 of wood per person per year . Many developed countries use more than twenty times as much . To-date , the local building culture has not been favourable to wood .
“ The primary constraints have been product development and marketing . The local industry has suffered from marketing myopia , as described in Theodore Levitt ' s 1960 Harvard Business Review article . It has been short-sighted in terms of the local market ' s needs and has not developed new products that could have increased local demand , manufacturing capacity , and competitiveness ,” says Grobbelaar .
The local sawn wood production in 1990 was 1.7 million cubic metres . The local sawmilling industry only grew 0.05 % per annum from 1990 to 2019 . During the same period , Chile ' s production grew from 2.9 million to 8 million cubic metres per annum , and Brazil ' s production increased from 2.8 million to 7.8 million cubic metres per annum .
Grobbelaar says that landholdings for softwood sawlogs is almost at the same level as the 1980s and have reduced
Leon
Leon Louw - Editor
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2 AUGUST / SEPTEMBER 2021 // www . timberiq . co . za