Joint research tests pine plywood for Japanese

Press, 26 September 1988, Page 5

Joint research tests pine plywood for Japanese

By OLIVER RIDDELL 1 in Wellington Japan and New Zealand have been jointly researching the suitability of New Zealand radiatapine plywood for the Japanese market. Research in both countries has indicated that radiata-pine plywood has good nail holding, bending strength and stiffness qualities, and that its appearance is acceptable in Japan as long as logs of a suitable grade are used. But to compete against other panel products in Japan, New Zealand radi-ata-pine plywood must be competitively priced.

Traditionally, Japan has made plywood from lauan logs from South-East Asia — a resource that is dwindling. It is now desperately short of materials to make plywood, and research is being directed to finding alternative panel products. New Zealand radiata pine is only one of the species being investigated; others include Siberian and North American woods. Alternative products under development include a veneer-based panel made with new processing methods from home-grown Japanese logs.

These are small diameter logs but the resource is potentially huge. Ten million hectares of plantation forest has been planted in Japan since 1945, whereas New Zealand has planted 1 million hectares of radiata pine. Mr H. Bier, of the Forest . Research Institute in Rotorua, said that for New Zealand’s radiatapine plywood to compete, production and distribution costs would have to be kept low. At the same time, he said, it was essential to guarantee quality - or structural performance using a stress or stiffness grading machine.