Engineered Wood Journal - Spring 2009 - (Page 21) year, and generated approximately 28,000 “click-throughs” to APA member sites by prospective customers seeking information on industrial grade products. Some 30 APA member companies are linked on the site. Among structural wood panels, plywood continues to dominate the industrial market, commanding an estimated 72 percent of share last year compared with oriented strand board’s 28 percent. A key reason for the spread is the ability of plywood manufacturers to more readily provide special lay-ups and customized features tailored to specific market niches and application requirements. OSB use in industrial applications has grown considerably, however, rising from a mere six percent in 1998 as a result of a leveling off of OSB market share growth in construction sheathing markets and implementation of new technologies and product features that better suit OSB to industrial uses. The key competitors to domestic structural wood panel manufacturers are steel, aluminum, plastic, domestic hardwood plywood, and imported panels of all varieties. In 2005, the last year for which reliable data are available, imported softwood plywood commanded a 19 percent share of the major industrial markets; imported OSB about nine percent. Domestic and imported hardwood plywood used in industrial applications totaled 7.3 billion square feet that same year, of which about 19 percent was imported. Structural wood panel imports have been declining since then, however, in response to the lower value of the U.S. dollar, higher transportation costs and the excess of domestic production capacity as a result of the housing market collapse. Softwood plywood and OSB imports are estimated to have totaled just 867 million square feet last year, down from 2.7 billion feet in 2005. Hardwood plywood imports also have declined. The environmental merits of domestically produced structural wood panels should aid in growing market share in the future as user and specifier material selections are based increasingly on “green” attributes. That appears particularly significant with regard to formaldehyde emissions, an issue spurred in part by increased media coverage of the new California Air Resources Board (CARB) formaldehyde emissions rules that went into effect January 1 and by a flurry of news reports last spring on formaldehyde concentrations in travel trailers and mobile homes that were provided as temporary housing to Gulf Coast hurricane victims by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). Based on information supplied over several months to CARB by APA, member products fall outside the scope of the CARB 21 Engineered Wood Journal • Spring 2009
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