{"id":9836,"date":"2012-08-13T15:03:54","date_gmt":"2012-08-13T21:03:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/idaho\/?p=9836"},"modified":"2012-08-13T15:03:54","modified_gmt":"2012-08-13T21:03:54","slug":"why-exporting-lumber-takes-more-than-just-shipping-containers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/idaho\/2012\/08\/13\/why-exporting-lumber-takes-more-than-just-shipping-containers\/","title":{"rendered":"Why Exporting Lumber Takes More Than Just Shipping Containers"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"attachment_9671\"  class=\"wp-caption module image center\" style=\"max-width: 620px;\"><a class=\"fancybox\" title=\"Idaho Forest Group's Mike Henley tells buyer Koji Fujiwara and consultant Paul Owen how the company sorts timber for the Japanese market.\" href=\"http:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/idaho\/files\/2012\/08\/Koji-Fujiwara-mill-tour.jpg\" rel=\"\"><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"size-large wp-image-9671\" title=\"Koji Fujiwara, mill tour\" src=\"http:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/idaho\/files\/2012\/08\/Koji-Fujiwara-mill-tour-620x469.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"620\" height=\"469\" srcset=\"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/idaho\/files\/2012\/08\/Koji-Fujiwara-mill-tour-620x469.jpg 620w, https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/idaho\/files\/2012\/08\/Koji-Fujiwara-mill-tour-300x227.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 620px) 100vw, 620px\" \/><\/a><p class=\"wp-media-credit\">Molly Messick \/ StateImpact Idaho<\/p><p class=\"wp-caption-text\">Idaho Forest Group&#39;s Mike Henley tells buyer Koji Fujiwara and consultant Paul Owen how the company sorts timber for the Japanese market.<\/p><\/div>\n<p>When the recession hit, it hit Idaho&#8217;s <a title=\"Logging: Recovery in\u00a0Sight?\" href=\"http:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/idaho\/topic\/logging\/\" target=\"_blank\">forest products industry<\/a> hard.\u00a0 For years, the U.S. housing market had been strong enough that lumber producers had little trouble finding buyers.\u00a0 But by 2009, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.census.gov\/construction\/nrc\/pdf\/startsan.pdf\" target=\"_blank\">housing starts stood at a fraction of what they had been<\/a> just four years earlier.\u00a0 Anxious for sales, <a title=\"In Lean Times, Lumber Companies Look Abroad\" href=\"http:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/idaho\/2012\/08\/07\/in-lean-times-lumber-companies-look-abroad\/\" target=\"_blank\">lumber producers looked to foreign markets<\/a>.\u00a0 As <em>StateImpact<\/em> <a title=\"How Traditional Japanese Homebuilding Reversed The Fortunes Of One Idaho Sawmill\" href=\"http:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/idaho\/2012\/08\/08\/how-traditional-japanese-homebuilding-reversed-the-fortunes-of-one-idaho-sawmill\/\" target=\"_blank\">reported<\/a> last week, the Japanese market has kept one North Idaho mill up and running.<!--more--><\/p>\n<p>That story focused on fundamental differences between the U.S. and Japanese housing markets, many of which relate to the Japanese market&#8217;s focus on quality.\u00a0 What that story didn&#8217;t get at is the challenges of producing lumber for an entirely new market; one that has a different set of aesthetic demands and standard measurements.<\/p>\n<div class=\"related-content alignleft\"><h4 class=\"related-header\">Related<\/h4><div class=\"links\"><h5>Posts<\/h5><ul><li class=\"link\"><a href=\"http:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/idaho\/2012\/08\/08\/how-traditional-japanese-homebuilding-reversed-the-fortunes-of-one-idaho-sawmill\/\">How Traditional Japanese Homebuilding Reversed The Fortunes Of One Idaho Sawmill<\/a><\/li><li class=\"link\"><a href=\"http:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/idaho\/2012\/08\/07\/in-lean-times-lumber-companies-look-abroad\/\">In Lean Times, Lumber Companies Look Abroad<\/a><\/li><li class=\"link\"><a href=\"http:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/idaho\/2012\/07\/11\/a-rancher-a-logger-and-economic-fate-in-rural-idaho\/\">A Rancher, A Logger, And Economic Fate In Rural\u00a0Idaho<\/a><\/li><li class=\"link\"><a href=\"http:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/idaho\/2012\/06\/21\/an-entrepreneur-stimulus-money-and-an-idaho-mill-town-that-wants-to-rise-again\/\">An Entrepreneur, Stimulus Money, And An Idaho Mill Town That Wants To Rise\u00a0Again<\/a><\/li><\/ul><\/div><div class=\"topics\"><h5>Topics<\/h5><p class=\"topic\"><img class=\"alignleft\" src=\"http:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/idaho\/files\/2011\/08\/Emerald-Forest-Products-stacker.jpg\" height=\"60\" width=\"60\" \/><a href=\"http:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/idaho\/topic\/logging\/\">Logging: Recovery in\u00a0Sight?<\/a><\/p><\/div><\/div>\n<p>&#8220;There&#8217;s defects in lumber that are seen to be acceptable at Lowe&#8217;s, Home Depot that you wouldn&#8217;t even think about putting it on a boat and sending it to Japan,&#8221; explains Steve Spletstoser, quality control manager in Idaho Forest Group&#8217;s Laclede mill.<\/p>\n<p>Producing lumber for a more stringent set of quality demands, along with shifting to metric units, involves a lot of problem-solving in a mill engineered to produce great quantities of lumber for U.S. standards.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;It turned us upside down, because you&#8217;re not in the same business,&#8221; says Spletstoser.\u00a0 &#8220;You&#8217;re making an entirely different product.\u00a0 There&#8217;s entirely different challenges.\u00a0 We had to learn how to make 4-meter lumber.\u00a0 We had to modify equipment to do that.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Idaho Forest Group treats a lot of the specifics of just how this works as proprietary information.\u00a0 Export sales manager Ahren Spilker says it only makes sense to be cautious, even though the company doesn&#8217;t believe many lumber producers would be able to replicate their process in order to serve the Japanese market.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;The whole reason we\u2019re letting you do the interview is that we\u2019re not real concerned about the generalization of exports for what we\u2019re doing, because it\u2019s a really difficult product to make for most mills,&#8221; Spilker explained during a tour of a sawmill just north of Coeur d&#8217;Alene.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;We\u2019ve gotten it down to where we can do it effectively and with margin, but domestic producers as a whole don\u2019t know how to do this.\u00a0 It\u2019s very difficult for them to understand a) the conversions b) how to source the logs and how to set up the breakdowns for the sawmill.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>In other words, the Laclede mill&#8217;s preservation &#8212; the focus of <a title=\"How Traditional Japanese Homebuilding Reversed The Fortunes Of One Idaho Sawmill\" href=\"http:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/idaho\/2012\/08\/08\/how-traditional-japanese-homebuilding-reversed-the-fortunes-of-one-idaho-sawmill\/\" target=\"_blank\">last week&#8217;s story<\/a> &#8212; isn&#8217;t simply a matter of finding a few Japanese clients and lining up shipping containers.\u00a0 It has involved a lot of technical adjustments, a lot of time and attention.\u00a0\u00a0 That&#8217;s one reason Spilker believes Idaho Forest Products will retain its focus on exporting to Japan, even as U.S. lumber demand begins to turn upward.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>When the recession hit, it hit Idaho&#8217;s forest products industry hard.\u00a0 For years, the U.S. housing market had been strong enough that lumber producers had little trouble finding buyers.\u00a0 But by 2009, housing starts stood at a fraction of what they had been just four years earlier.\u00a0 Anxious for sales, lumber producers looked to foreign [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":46,"featured_media":9671,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[13],"tags":[157,52],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/idaho\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9836"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/idaho\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/idaho\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/idaho\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/46"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/idaho\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9836"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/idaho\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9836\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9857,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/idaho\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9836\/revisions\/9857"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/idaho\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9671"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/idaho\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9836"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/idaho\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9836"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/idaho\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9836"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}