Utilizing America's Hardwood Resource

Part One

I N discussing utilization of I America's hardwood resource, it is important to differentiate between high-quality hardwood sawlog timber, and the great bulk of the nation's hardwood resource.

It is probably safe to say that the first category, both domestic and imported, will continue in high demand, with usage continuing to be pushed by aesthetic preference and alternative wood cost.

The hardwoods that are subject for review here are lower-quality. Their utilization is being pulled upward by the increasing values of softwoodsand by the increasing cost of nonrenewable fuels.

In a world context. let's examine the location of the hardwoods. The North American hardwood resource. while immense and underutilized, is a relatively small segment of the total world hardwood resource. Latin America supports by far the largest of the world's hardwood inventories.

When we look at the harvest of hardwood of saw-and-veneer-log quality, however, this North American harvest is a greater absolute contributor to world supply than is Latin America's.

This results not only from species considerations but from economic accessibility and infrastructure. The importance of the Far East, particularly the increasing volumes harvested in Indonesia, the Philippines and Malaysia, continues.

When we look at material actually moving across international borders, the Far Eastern sup- ply has an immense lead, and has filled virtually all of the world's incremental demands during the past 20 years.

While most of the hardwood moving in world commerce is utilized in Japan and Europe, there has been an increasing market in the United States for it as well, particularly in veneers.

Story at a Glance

High softwood cost continues to affect hardwood utilization.. more costly energy will heightentrend...increased and more effective management will hike supply long term.

However, in the case of hardwood lumber, imports continue to capture only from 20/o to 50/o of the market, reaching the high end of that range only in years of greatest strength in U.S. housing starts.

Now, to turn to the United Stateshardwood resource itself. Even in terms of sawtimber, growth (20 billion bf) today exceeds removals (15 billion board feet) by more than 300/0. The total growth of hardwood growing stock exceeds removals by 800/0. Also, removals from inventory, 44 million cunits, exceed actual product usage by 12 million cunits.

wood is almost 900/0. That is true of less than half of the hardwood harvest, with the majority finding its initial use in pulp, manufactured panels, or as fuel.

Also, U.S. hardwood lumber production has held rather stable, in a range from 6.3 to 7.7 billion board feet, for more than 20 years. This reflects the lack in quality of trees available after 300 years of high-grading to fill the increasing demand for high value lumber. It also results from the conversion of some of the most productive hardwood areas to agricultural and develoment uses, the Mississippi Delta being a prime example.

In pulpwood, however, the picture is considerably different. Use of hardwood has grown to 3280/o of 1955 levels, while softwood pulpwood use has not quite doubled. Hardwood now accounts for 250lo of the nation's total pulp furnish. By the end of the century, it could be as high as 400/0, depending on the volume of available softwoods and world fiber markets.

The degree of hardwood usage in pulping furnish varies regionally. Again, it is the increasing value of softwoods that is pulling hardwood utilization at the lower end of the quality scale. In the South, the price per cord of pine pulpwood ranges from less than $4 in Tennessee to more than $18 in Florida.

Our thanks to Charles W. Bingham, wnior v.p., Weyerhaeuser Co., for his kind permission to excert this material ,from a presentation he made to the Forest Products Research Society.ed.

While the hardwood roundwood harvest in total is little more than one-third that of softwood in the United States, the conversion channels also are quite different. Twothirds of the softwood harvest is directed toward conversion in lumber and plywood mills initially.

In the West, the volume of harvest going directly to lumber or ply-

Let's look at some examples. If pine is at $10 per cord, and hardwood at $2a somewhat typical situation in many parts of the South, that translates into $9.06 raw material cost per bone dry ton of chips for pulping, in the case of pine, and to $1.61 per bone dry ton in the case of hardwood. If the pulp mill runs with a yield of 500/o pulp - 1,000 pounds pulp per bone dry ton of wood chips usedthe theoretical cost advantage of hardwood furnish equals $15 per ton of pulp or paper.

(Continued next month)