Fears over overseas supply promoting use of domestic timber+

FUKUOKA, July 16 Kyodo - Domestically produced timber is enjoying a surge in popularity in Japan because of uncertainties over supplies of imported timber following a sharp rise in demand from emerging countries.

The use of domestic timber also promotes the fostering of forests, which in turn can help combat global warming, so industry officials are hoping the trend continues.

''We have a big opportunity to expand the use of domestic timber,'' said one official.

In Yamashiro in northern Imari city, Saga Prefecture, the timber market and timber companies, including Chugoku Mokuzai Co. of Kure in Hiroshima Prefecture, are working together to achieve this.

Japanese cedars from various parts of Kyushu in southwestern Japan are transported to Chugoku Mokuzai, which handles about 200,000 cubic meters of timber a year, an unusually large volume in an industry where an annual volume of 50,000 cubic meters is said to be large.

''We are having trouble securing storage sites,'' one Chugoku Mokuzai official noted.

The company's main business was to saw up imported logs, but it began considering the use of domestic timber because the United States started regulating timber exports due to excessive deforestation.

It developed a technology to use unusable bent trunks by gluing them together and opened its Imari office for full-scale production of house-building materials in 2005.

Anxiety in the industry is also growing over the procurement of imported timber because Russian-produced timber, which used to be exported chiefly to Japan, is now being exported to China where a construction boom is under way.

''The utility value of domestic timber is high both in terms of its stock and price,'' said Kaname Fujimura, head of the office.

When Chugoku Mokuzai started the business, there was some pessimism about whether a sufficiently large amount of domestic timber could be collected, but reactions from those engaged in the forestry industry were different.

Akikazu Sakamoto, who runs a forestry company in Oguni, Kumamoto Prefecture, said, ''Thinned wood, which used to attract no buyers, has begun to be sold, contributing to increases in our revenues.''Seihoku Corp., the largest plywood manufacturer based in Tokyo, is also now trying to use domestic timber for more than half of its needs, a move that will help combat global warming.

Under the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, industrialized countries, including Japan, are required to cut their greenhouse gas emissions from 1990 levels by an average of 5.2 percent by 2012. The role of forests in absorbing CO2 is large, but the protocol does not recognize the reduction effects of thinned wood and otherkinds that are not managed.

Shunichi Fujikawa, chief of the business information section at Seihoku, said, ''It is difficult to achieve the reduction target unless the entire state uses domestically produced timber for the benefit of forestry companies and workers.''In January this year, the company decided to build a plant in Gifu Prefecture to use only domestic timber, the first such plant.

Production of domestic timber hit a low of about 16 million cubic meters in 2002 but has since been increasing.

Kusao Endo, a professor at Kagoshima University who is well versed in forestry policies, said forest resources planted after World War II have become enriched enough to meet domestic demand.

''To have domestic timber used stably, it is necessary to further reduce costs by expanding the forest industry's scale of operations,'' he said.