Industrial users have overtaken users of appearance lumber in terms of U.S. consumption of hardwood lumber, a trend that has been firmly established for at least seven years.
However, U.S. Forest Service researchers consider the shift to be an anomaly that has gone against the grain of historic market conditions.
The study by William Luppold and Matthew Bumgardner concluded that the market may return to a more typical historical pattern in the near-term, but it will depend on construction-related markets as well as global demand for American hardwoods.
The study, “U.S. Hardwood Lumber Consumption and International Trade from 1991 to 2014,” was published in Wood and Fiber Science in 2016. Luppold is an economist at the Forest Service Northern Research Station in Princeton, West Virginia, and Bumgardner is a forest products technologist at the Northern Research Station in Delaware, Ohio.
Consumption of both appearance lumber and industrial lumber increased from 1991-2000 as imported lumber augmented domestic lumber production, their study showed.
However, consumption of appearance lumber began to decline in 2000, a shift attributed to the globalization of the furniture industry followed by a drop in U.S. home construction. By contrast, consumption by industrial users trended up and down slightly for a few years beginning in 2000, then rose fairly consistently — all while overall consumption was roughly constant.
In 1991, for example, consumption by appearance users was 48%, industrial users, 40%, and other users, 13%. As late as 2002 the proportions were nearly the same — 50%, 39%, and 11%, respectively.
By 2006, though, consumption by appearance users had fallen to 46% whereas the proportion of industrial consumption had increased to 43%, and industrial users overtook the appearance category in 2007.
Consumption by both categories trended down during the 2008-9 recession — the third “shock” that has propelled the shift in markets, but the decline of consumption by appearance users was significantly more precipitous.
Industrial consumption was 54% compared to 36% for appearance in 2009 and 51% compared to 36% in 2014.
Consumption by both categories of users remained at low levels from 2009-2011 before beginning to trend back upward.
As the authors noted, domestic hardwood lumber consumption and production fell by more than 9.4 million cubic meters between 2006-09. The largest decline in hardwood lumber production in the previous 50 years was a drop of 3.5 million cubic meters in 1973-75.
Domestic hardwood lumber consumption was at 16.2 million cubic meters in 2009, a drop of 43% compared to 1999’s peak levels.
The authors concluded, “The extent to which the market might return to a more historical pattern in the near-term depends largely on construction-related markets (including remodeling) in North America and continued strength in global demand for U.S. hardwoods.”
