Japan’s lumber imports from Europe and North America forecast to drop

The Japanese Forestry Agency recently held a meeting for wood products demand projection for the first half of 2018.    Imported lumber from North America, Europe and structural composite lumber are expected to decrease while logs from North America for the second quarter and from New Zealand for the first quarter are expected to rise. Supply of domestic logs for lumber processing would decrease slightly, but logs for plywood would increase by 8.5%.    Japanese housing starts show signs of slowing and only 960,000 units are forecast for 2017, 9,000 less