TROPICAL HARDWOODS

(Continued from page 16) is generally in the same commoditytype category as Douglas fir.

Since then, lauan has arrived in the United States in the form of lumber, plywood, door stiles, drawer sides and other furniture parts, door skins, drawer bottom, etc. The African species also followed suit and there are the same oocommodity football" woods such as obeche, fuma, okoume, chen chen, etc.; so that the glamouris gone from this area as well.

Also, we used to think of South America in terms of rosewood, purple heart. imbuya, primavera, etc. and now when one mentions South America the immediate inference is that we are talking about virola, cativo and other utilitarian species.

So, we then had a burgeoning commodity and we found that factories began springing up all over, particularly in Southeast Asia.

For example, a typical Korean plywood factory, then and nowo spews out as much as 100,000 4'x8' panels per day. Taiwan's production has grown by leaps and bounds and the same can be said of Malaysia and the Philippines. In addition, production in Singapore has gone from almost nothing to very large figures. In basic essence there is enough production to take care of the entire world and then some. Any shortage of tropical hardwoods has proved to be artificial and temporary in the past and we are inclined to believe that the same will be true in the foreseeable future.

It can also be said that in the past seven or eight years, tropical hardwoods have begun to hit a much greater number of markets in the United States. In some instances, much money has been lost by asking for too sophisticated a product for the supplier to manufacture efficiently.

It hardly needs to be repeated that this country is fast running out of this type of domestic timber and our need for imports must continue to grow. The same thing can be said of the European Community and it seems obvious that the future will require a continued large supply.

There are two basic problems to this. The first iswhere can the wood come from? (which deals with crystal-ball gazing which I will attempt to do in a moment). The second has to do with the present and that iswhat can you count upon?

For openers, Africa is embroiled in political problems, plus the emerging nationalism of the supplying nations which has remoued foreign control and to a great extent reliable personnel from the supplying areas. Taiwan could be lost at almost any motnent to mainland China. The Filipinos are going through u)hat cdn be termed a religious ciail uar. Malaysia is haaing a uery difficult tirne because of the racial difficulties between M alays and Chinese. Singapore cannot seem to get logs easily. South America is still too new to be a truly meaningful source of supply to the oaerall market. Indonesia is just beginning to supply, but so far nothing more sophisticated than the log itself.

Japan has become a buying rather than exporting nation of most things rnade of tropical hardwoods and what used to be a terribly low wage leuel has now become among the highest in the world. And euerything could happen dt any time in Korea.

You may have noticed that I have given a contradictory pair of statements and I would like to explain just what I mean. All the troubles all over the supplying world mentioned above do not mean that there would be a total cessation of supply. I cannot back this statement up with too many facts but I believe that without the troubles (or at least some of them), that I have outlined above, the supply would so far exceed demand that the situation would be impossible.

This gets us down to the bare root of the matterwhere can the timber still come from? At least four nations mentioned above have enormous production capacity but no logs. There are no tropical hardwood stands in K oreao Japan, Taiwan or Singapore. The trees can only be found in Indonesia, Malaysia, and the Philippines in Southeast Asia plus Africa and South America.

Earlier we discussed rather vaguely the traumatic time we have had recently in Southeast Asia and mentioned that what used to be truth is no longer such. It has been quite appalling to see that the validity of the contract is a thing of the past. Prices on existing orders were renegotiated so many times in the past six months on a rising market that a tremendous resentment has been built up in North America and Europe.

There is a lot of blood in many eyes and now that the market is turning downward I, personally, sorrow to see that the U.S. and European buyers are giving back in kind and in some cases even teaching the Oriental supplier a couple of new dirty tricks. From here on it has to be considered open warfare with no holds barred and I think that many of us will long for the days when an order actually was an order. Many people will have to learn a whole new set of ground rules and I rather imagine that a significant number will withdraw from the arena in sheer disgust.

If one is to assume that business can be done only on the basis of mutual trust and confidence, and I might add that this is no longer an inseparable part of doing buinesswhere can u)e go? South America would appear to be the most promising area of all. There is an abundance oftinber and new production is going in aery fast. It probably is predictable that the real and con(Please turn to page 44)

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Fiberglass Ladder P-O-P

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Colored Washable Grout

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