Engineered Wood Journal - Spring 2009 - (Page 20) Industrial Strength by Jack Merry t’s certainly no panacea. In fact, it too has declined in tandem with the overall economy. But the industrial market for structural wood panels has provided relative steadiness and at least a partial buffer to the demand shock of the housing market collapse. The industrial market encompasses a wide and diverse range of applications, from upholstered furniture and kitchen cabinets to crates, pallets, boats and signage. APA, which periodically researches industrial market panel usage and use trends, surveyed 33 market segments in its last study, for the year 2005. According to APA’s latest estimate, the U.S./Canadian industrial market consumed approximately 6.15 billion square feet of structural wood panels in 2008. That was almost 11 percent below the 2007 mark and 16 percent below the volume recorded for 2005, when the industry produced a recordsetting 43.1 billion square feet of panels. Compared with the housing market, however, those numbers aren’t too bad. Demand for structural panels in residential construction fell 32 percent in 2008 from the previous year, and a staggering 53 percent from 2005. Industrial market demand also shows strength in terms of its percentage of total industry production—hovering between 17 percent in 2005 and about 20 percent last year. Panel consumption in the residential construction market, by contrast, has fallen from 61 percent of production in 2005 to just 40 percent last year. The importance of the industrial market “becomes most manifest in times like these, when housing demand tanks,” notes APA Field Services Manager Non-Construction Market Applications Help Soften the Effects of the Housing Slump I Mark Halverson, who also serves as staff advisor to the APA Industrial Market Subcommittee. “It’s a critical pillar of support for overall market demand.” The subcommittee, comprised of some 16 APA member company representatives, is chaired by Kevin Daugherty, plywood and veneer sales manager at Swanson Group Mfg. LLC, Glendale, Ore. One of four subcommittees of the APA Marketing Advisory Committee, the group advises staff on development of industrial market promotion activities. Under the 2009 Strategic Marketing Plan, those activities support three primary objectives: information transfer tailored to the needs of industrial users and specifiers, promotion of the environmental advantages of structural wood panels, and positioning the reliability and safety of APA member products relative to competitive products, including imported panels. The centerpiece of the Association’s industrial market promotion is performancepanels.com, an APA website devoted exclusively to structural wood panels for industrial market applications. Launched in 2006, the site covers panel product attributes and features specially suited for a wide variety of industrial applications, including furniture, cabinets, displays, pallets, crates and boxes, agricultural bins, racks, reels, mezzanine floors, trucks and railcars, recreational vehicles, boats, signs and specialty applications. Links to APA manufacturers based on various panel characteristics and features also are provided. The site logged nearly 68,000 unique visits last year, up 25 percent from the previous Engineered Wood Journal • Spring 2009 20 http://www.performancepanels.com
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