Japan Southsea Lumber Conference held its 45th ordinary general meeting on June 13 and made

public a revised estimate on the Japan's demand for Southsea logs for this year, which was initially

made at the end of last year: 1.78 million cubic meters, a decrease of 25.9% from the record last

year, of which 1.6 million cubic meters for plywood usage and 189,000 cubic meters to produce

lumber. In the main supplying source Sarawak, Malaysia, stricter lookout for illegal logging has

reduced the stocks of logs drastically, even for the local markets. As a result, the shippers quote all

stronger prices so that the trade houses could not catch up, and the purchase of the logs has been

much more difficult. In spite of that, Japanese plywood manufacturers, who are the users of

Southsea material logs, are not worried too much, because the number of Lauan plywood mills have

lessened and accordingly their production has been shrinking year after year. But instead, they have

shifted the materials to softwood, and this tendency is still going. And the market of Lauan plywood

has been covered by imported products. Likewise demands for Southsea logs for lumber have been

all the way down. With a shrinkage of the imports of logs for plywood, good quality logs for lumber

have scarcely arrived in Japan. The reduction of the distributed volumes has much weakened the

demands. Consequently, it is estimated that demands of Southsea logs for lumber will be less by