JAMES R. TURNBULLJAMES R. TURNBULL is executive president of the American Plywood Association, Tacoma, Washington. This paper was prepared for the second session of the FAO Committee on Wood-Based Panel Products, held at Rome in November 1968.
When, in 1964, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations resolved to establish an FAO Committee on Wood-Based Panel Products, it voiced concern about the dangers that might arise from an imbalance between the demand for wood-based panel products and the rate of expansion of world manufacturing capacity. Oris V. Wells, Deputy Director-General of FAO, renewed those warnings in his opening address to the first session of the committee held at Rome in 1966.
Mr. Wells recognized the important role that wood-based panels could play in raising the housing standards of both developed and developing countries. But he also foresaw potential problems of industrial growth. In North America, at least, this future has already arrived; the promise that industrial visionaries saw for our industries has been kept.
In North America today - and it is safe to say that the same will soon happen in the rest of the world - wood-based panels have become a necessity for construction. At one time, wood-based panels in North America were used almost solely for their decorative effect. No more; today they are a necessity - in housing, in industry and in agriculture. And the reason, of course, is simple; wood-based panel products do a job and do it well.
Plywoods, for instance, bring an extraordinary rigidity and strength to almost any structure to which they are added. Softwood plywood is still used in ever-increasing volume for its decorative effects. But it is of greater use now in housing, in such structural applications as concrete forms, floor underlayment, roofing, sheathing, even siding. In industry, softwood plywood is being used for cargo containers, pallets, bins, and in the factory building itself. Agricultural uses follow the same pattern.
The other attributes of wood-based panels have proved just as valuable. No longer is it necessary to erect a building one board at a time. With wood-based panels large areas can be covered in a single application, and the time saved means a reduction in costs, particularly the cost of labour.
Use of wood-based panels also means a better utilization of the world's forests through more efficient consumption of its basic raw material - the log. Some panel products also make use of the waste products from other wood-processing operations. And in areas where wood products are scarce, or are diminishing, development of efficient wood-using industries is mandatory.
But along with the important role that wood-based panel products can play in housing and industry in both developed and developing countries, Mr. Wells also foresaw potential problems of industrial growth. Imbalances resulting from rapid technological changes, uneven growth in product acceptance, and incomplete information about market trends and capacity development were among the specific problems he identified.
It is clear that in the modern world a manufacturer can no longer merely produce a good product and heap it in the market place. He must let users know what he has to offer, show them where and how to use his product most effectively, and persuade them that he has what they need. For today there can be no efficient relationship between production and consumption, no escaping the problems outlined by Mr. Wells, without some kind of education-promotion programme to link manufacturer to consumer, whether in a developed or a developing country.
The term "promotion" gets a mixed reaction in the world today. To some it seems a magic elixir, capable of producing markets out of thin air. To others it is a fraud, nothing more than a method of selling worthless products to those who can least afford to buy them. But promotion is neither of those things. It is an educational method - and an effective one - for bridging the gap between the manufacturer and the market. And in the United States the gap is tremendous.
In a primitive village, a man who makes a particular product has no problem in letting his neighbours know that it is available. He need do no more than display it near his doorway. But in an industrial nation the size of the United States the problem of letting others know what you have produced can be immense.
Take the problem faced by the softwood plywood industry in the United States. To develop an effective market for a new product, users must be contacted in every corner of the nation: architects, who would use the product in design; builders, who would use it in construction; and even householders, who would use it in personal home improvement programmes terms of numbers, this means some 87000 builders, 34000 architects, and about 50 million householders. It is essential that this be done in all parts of the world and for all wood-based panel products if their most efficient use is to be secured, the world's housing problems solved, effective employment of production facilities assured, and savings gained in construction labour costs.
Bridging the gap between manufacturer and market, however, involves far more than letting users know what the wood-based panel industry has to offer. Before an industry can undertake any promotion, it first needs technical information about its product. It must establish controls over the quality of the product and it needs to have information concerning the markets to be reached. In particular, industry must conduct product research, set up quality control procedures, and analyse its market in detail from present consumption, through potential growth, to customer needs and practices. Then, and only then, is it ready to do an effective job of communicating, educating and promoting.
In varying degrees, the wood-based panel product industries in the United States have incorporated all of these factors into the development of their promotion programmes. They all conduct laboratory tests to gain knowledge of their products. They all have instituted some form of quality control. They all analyse the market potentials of their products. And they all communicate and relate their product to the user.
In the United States, such education work is usually carried out by trade associations formed by manufacturers to handle specific promotion functions. In some instances, manufacturers conduct programmes of their own. But in most cases, the job of letting users know about the generic product - insulation board, softwood plywood, hardwood plywood, hardboard and particle board - is left to these trade associations.
The operations of the associations, of course, overlap. The softwood plywood industry, for example, makes floor underlayment which is also made by the particle board industry; it markets interior wall panels, which are also made by the hardwood plywood people. This overlapping occurs throughout the industry. But the industry's education efforts still serve the purpose described earlier. Each of us tells the consumer about the products, what they will do, and how to use them. And the consumer chooses that material which suits him best, because of performance, cost or availability.
Growth of the wood-based panel industry in the United States has been phenomenal. In the softwood plywood industry, production in the past 36 years has grown from 480 million square feet on a 3/8 inch basis (425000 cubic metres) to an expected 1000 million square feet (1.23 million cubic metres) this year, with next year's total predicted at 1000 million square feet (1.33 million cubic metres).
Other segments of the wood-based panel industry have made similar gains. The hardboard industry, for example, produced 950 million square feet of hardboard on a 1/8 inch basis in 1950 (approximately 28000 cubic metres or 27000 metric tons). Last year, the industry's production rose to 3000 million square feet (approximately 885000 cubic metres or 850000 metric tons) and is expected to rise another 12.4 percent this year.
In 1967, production in the particle board industry rose to an estimated 1100 million square feet (approximately 1.95 million cubic metres or 1.40 million metric tons), an alltime high, with a 12 percent gain in output expected in 1968. For hardwood plywood it is the same story of new records in 1967; with officials predicting a 20 to 25 percent increase in domestic shipments in 1968 and comparable increases in prefinished panelling. The insulation board industry foresees a 15 percent increase in production over 1967 when shipments totalled more than 2500 million square feet on a ½ inch basis (approximately 3 million cubic metres or 850000 metre tons).
The American Plywood Association is the largest wood-based panel product association in the world. It operates on an annual budget of about $6 million of which half is allocated to direct educational informative work, 25 percent to quality inspection of members' products and the remaining 25 percent to technical research, administration and overhead, and the operation of subsidiary manufacturing research and component fabrication organizations.
The association is supported by contributions from its members, based on their output. And with anticipated increases in plywood production, it is possible that its budget will reach $7 million by 1970, with the bulk of the increase, again, being allocated to direct promotional activities.
As indicated earlier, success in bridging the gap between the manufacturer and the customer demands first ability to make a quality product. But quality, the association has found, is not a simple thing to produce. To start with, it must be defined. Then controls must be set up to make sure that it is attained, and finally constant research is necessary to make certain that the product makes maximum use of the latest developments.
To attain a high quality, the association has set up a quality control programme which includes inspection in the mill and further testing of each mill's product in a laboratory. The association allows use of its DFPA grade trademark only to firms that meet association requirements. To define the quality of the product - to let customers know how the plywood panels will perform in actual use - the association has a Technical Services Division charged with testing plywood under various load and structural conditions. As a result of these tests, it is able to tell potential users exactly how softwood plywood will perform. It publishes detailed stress tables on various types and thicknesses of plywood in a wide variety of applications.
The association also engages in product research to find more and better ways to use its product. It not only investigates the use of the product by itself, but in combination with all sorts of other materials.
The association often cooperates with people normally thought to be competitors in order to find new uses for plywood. It recently conducted fire tests with a leading gypsum panel manufacturer who, in turn, conducted acoustical tests on a structural combination of plywood and gypsum. Another piece of cooperative research led to the use of single panels of underlayment grade plywood beneath carpets.
After a three-year fire testing programme, plywood was recently accepted in the United States as interchangeable with lumber in all wood frame floor-ceiling assemblies fire rated to one hour or less. This made it possible to suggest the use of plywood in systems which had been previously denied to it.
Over the years, the American Plywood Association has also worked closely with chemical, plastic, and even metal companies in developing and testing coatings and overlays for plywood. As a result of these activities, it has been able to offer a whole spectrum of new products and new wood applications, including a fibreglass reinforced plywood cargo container being used with increasing frequency on the new containerized ships.
A subsidiary of the American Plywood Association, Plywood Fabricator Service, has been heavily engaged in the development of component structural systems employing plywood - systems which are being used increasingly throughout North America in the fabrication of low-cost housing units. A new system fresh from the laboratory, however, is worthless until it becomes known to the user in the field. Literature defining the capabilities of a product has no value until it gets into the hands of a potential customer.
In the American Plywood Association the task of telling users about the possibilities of plywood is performed by the Information and Field Services Divisions. The Information Services Division does what the name implies; it tells the nation what softwood plywood will do.
But not even that job is simple. Here too, complex problems demand complex answers. To make sure that all possible segments of the community are reached, to make certain that every potential user knows about what the industry has to offer, the Association Information Services Division is divided into sections covering advertising, public relations and promotion. The advertising department oversees the extensive campaigns carried out each year in home building and industrial journals. The public relations department maintains continuing contact with news media informing the public constantly of new plywood uses. The promotion department publishes plans and brochures giving technical details on the uses of plywood in apartments, pallets, bins, cargo containers, and in agriculture - to name only a few.
The Field Services Division embraces a market research department that keeps the association informed on what the market is doing, where plywood is being used and on future potential markets. It also includes a market development department headed by specialists in construction, industrial and agricultural uses of softwood plywood. Finally, it embraces a field promotion division of over 60 experts, located all over the United States, whose job is to explain personally to individual specifiers and users what plywood will do to solve particular problems. Assuredly, these individual elements must be organized. They must operate under a plan. They must work together.
In the softwood plywood association, an operations committee defines specific promotion areas. This year, for instance, the American Plywood Association picked six market areas - residential construction, home rehabilitation, materials handling, transportable buildings, transportation and specialties - for concentrated promotion efforts.
Each of these areas is attacked at all the levels described, by advertising, by news material describing what the product will do, by brochures and pamphlets explaining again the technical nature and capabilities of plywood, and by contacts by fieldmen.
Other associations in the wood-based panel industry in the United States do much the same thing. Some have organizations similar to the American Plywood Association. Some differ. Some conduct all operations within an association structure. Others contract portions of the work to laboratories and advertising agencies. But each association in its own way deals with all of the problems already outlined.
The particle board industry, through the National Particleboard Association, this year is concentrating its promotion efforts in three areas - the floor underlayment market, the core-stock market, and in the development of new markets through technical innovation and product information. It is also engaged in several technical studies to determine the physical characteristics of particle board under various uses and applications. Data from the tests will be communicated to the market to generate further demand for the product.
The insulation board industry, through the Insulation Board Institute, has been concentrating its promotion efforts largely on the sound conditioning features of its product, aiming its programme particularly toward the growing multi-family-apartment construction industry. It, too, publishes brochures, film strips, radio programme material, advertising - all aimed at informing the market of its product's capabilities.
The hardboard industry, through the American Hardboard Association, has been concentrating its promotion efforts on the home remodelling market. Research of that association predicts a $14000 million market annually in residential remodelling alone. To reach its market the industry sent sales kits to more than 4000 lumber and building material dealers and 2000 newspapers. It also published brochures, produced motion pictures, and advertisements to explain the values of its product.
The hardwood plywood industry, through its Hardwood Plywood Manufacturers Association, does not conduct a collective marketing programme, but it does supply its industry with market information, and offers a quality control programme to a number of its members. This association, like all the others, produces brochures, booklets, films and other educational aids aimed at explaining the nature and uses of its manufactured product.
This then, generally, is how the various parts of the wood-based panel industry in the United States bridge the manufacture-to-market gap.
It would be presumptuous to argue that techniques used by the American Plywood Association should be applied in every part of the world. But the problems are the same, and the results sought are the same. Also, the methods available for doing the required job are fairly limited. The form of solution may vary, but the substance, in most instances, will remain the same.
We have learned how to make good wood-based panel products. We know how to maintain the high quality of what we produce. We must now achieve the ultimate goal of reaching a maximum market, of seeing to it that every user, buyer, builder, architect, designer and consumer - in the world - is aware of what we have to offer, what our products can do for them.
As has already been pointed out on many occasions, wood-based panel products can go a long way toward alleviating the critical shortage of housing in almost all parts of the world. But we must let the world know what we have. We must show the world what our products can do. We must actively help the world find the answers it seeks. We must, again, in a word, promote - and promote all over the world.
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