APA prepares for its 75th anniversary

fN 1905. a small wooden box manuIfacturing company displayed a new product at the World's Fair in Portland, Or. They called it 3-ply veneer work. and it senerated consid-

,1933

The Douglas Fir Plywood Association is chartered to advance the interests of the Pacific Northwest plywood industry. Among its primary assignments: establish uniform grading rules and help to improve product quality.

erable interest.

Several door manufacturers placed orders for the product, and soon other customers were finding new uses for it, such as drawer bottoms and auto-

1940"

Dr. James Nevin, a chemist at Harbor Plywood, Aberdeen, Wa., develops a walerproof adhesive that opens the door to plywood's use in a much broader range of applications.

1934 mobile running boards.

DFPA soonsors the first of many plywood demonstration houses, part of a campaign that launched plywood's long history of success in the residential construction market.

Portland Manufacturing Co.'s 3ply veneer work, soon to be known as "plywood," was the first in a long succession of innovative engineered wood products that today are used for countless construction and industrial applications in markets throughout the world.

At the forefront of the industry's dramatic rise to prominence was a small nonprofit trade association whose members were all located in the Pacific Northwest. But like the industry it represents, that association-known originally as the Douglas Fir Plywood Associationalso has changed dramatically over the years.

Today, APA-The Engineered Wood Association, which next year will celebrate its 75th anniversary. represents approximately 70 companies with 160 U.S. and Canadian mills producing a wide range of engineered wood products-from plywood and oriented strand board to glulam timber, wood I-joists, and laminated veneer lumber.

Founded in Tacoma, Wa., in 1933, the nonprofit trade association's chief

The first southern oine plywood mill begins operations in Fordyce, Arkansas. The Douglas Fir Plywood Association changes its name to American Plywood Association (APA).

1964 mandates were to develop a nationwide promotion program and to aid mills in assuring consistent product quality.

1969 APA ooens a new 37,000-sq. ft. research laboratory at association headquarters in Tacoma, Wa. The facility remains to this day one of the most sophisticated wood product research labs in the world.

A major breakthrough in product quality occurred in 1934 with the discovery of a waterproof glue, which greatly expanded product application opportunities.

And in 1938 a new commercial standard was developed, facilitating promotion of the product as a standardized commodity rather than by individual brand names.

By 1940 plywood was being used as subfloors, wall sheathing, roof sheathing, paneling and in other building construction applications. The industry that year counted 25 mills and production topped one billion sq. ft. Eighty percent of production originated in the state of Washington.

With the outbreak of war in 1941 , plywood production was quickly diverted to the war effort. The product was used in PT boats, assault ships, airplanes, banacks, military buildings, shipping crates, footlockers and countless other military applications.

The industry grew dramatically after the war as American GIs came home and the post-war baby and housing booms took off. The number of mills grew from 4O in 1941 to 100 in 1954 and production shot up from 1.6 billion ft. to almost 4 billion. Oregon that year counted 47 mills, Washington 36, and California 17.

By 1960, U.S. softwood plywood production exceeded 7.8 billion sq. ft., a figure analysts only five years earlier had predicted would not be attained until 1975.

For more than a half centurv. the softwood plywood industry *utlo.uted exclusively in the Pacific Northwest and British Columbia and relied primarily on the region's vast supply of Douglas fir. Research and development efforts, however, eventually gave rise to new technology that solved the problem of how to effectively bond veneer from other softwood species. In 1964, with that obstacle overcome, Georgia-Pacific Corp. opened the nation's first southern pine plywood mill in Fordyce, Ar.

The Douglas Fir Plywood Association changed its name that same year to American Plywood Association (APA) in recognition of the emergence of the southern pine plywood industry.

Plywood is widely regarded as the original "engineered wood product" because it was one of the first-and certainly one of the most commercially successful-to be made by bonding together cut or refashioned pieces of wood to form a larger and integral composite unit.

But the idea of "reconstituting" wood fiber to produce better-than-

Association "outgrew" its name when the first wood building materials led eventually to a technological revolution and the rise of a whole new engineered wood products industry.

In the early 1980s, for example, the association's membership expanded to include oriented strand board, a product the association helped bring to market through development of new panel performance standards.

And a decade later, APA formed a related nonprofit organization, American Wood Systems, to accommodate manufacturers of non-panel engineered wood products, such as glulam timber, wood I-joists, and laminated veneer lumber. (American Wood Systems, later renamed Engineered Wood Systems, eventually merged with APA.)

To better reflect the broadening

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APA promulgates new structural wood panel performance standards and broadens its oroduct representation to oriented strand board, an innovative new panel product.

APA forms a related nonprofit corporation, American Wood Systems (later renamed Engineered Wood Systems), to represent manufacturers of gluedlaminated (glulam) timber and other engineered wood products.

American Plywood Association changes its name to APA-The Engineered Wood Association in recognition of the expanding product mix and widening geographical range of its membership.

The plywood industry celebrates its 100th anniversary with the dedication of a commemorative plaque at the site of the industry's first plywood mill and a centennial banquet in Portland, Or.