World glulam timber production increased 19% in 2000 to 3.1 million m3, a record year. Most of this increase can be attributed to increased glulam consumption in Japan. Japanese wooden housing starts actually declined 2% in 2000, but glulam demand grew. Records show that imports increased 55% in 2000 and much of this volume came from Europe.

Long-time cypress lumber and mulch operator Bill Bell came from south central Florida to the state’s Panhandle region in search of logs—and ended up starting one of the sweetest sawmill situations around. Four years ago, Bell, a part-owner of the Kempfer cypress mill in St. Cloud, Fla., was looking for new raw material sources when he began discussions with St. Joe Timberlands officials.

As expected, industry’s downturn kept some folks away from the Southern Forest Products Assn.’s 26th Forest Products Machinery & Equipment Exposition here July 19-21. The biennial event, held at the Georgia World Congress Center, is widely known as one of industry’s largest gatherings, and as usual sawmillers and sawmill equipment manufacturer reps were well represented.

The 2x4 price range graph on the following page shows the monthly gyrations of a typical softwood lumber price over the last eight years, but it could just as easily be taken for a sawyer’s process control chart. If it were, the sawyer would recognize it as a wildly out-of-control process and be scrambling to fix it. Unfortunately the volatility in lumber prices was caused by factors outside the reach of a sawyer’s tools.

Perforex Solutions Corp. of Bellingham, Wash. and Oakville, Ont. has acquired CAM Technologies Inc., a provider of information technology solutions. Under the acquisition, Perforex Solutions has also acquired the software business of Perforex, a forest industry performance management consulting firm.

Maxi Mill, Inc. introduces the Maxi planer drive, a high speed drive designed for your specific application. The planer drive decreases downtime, reduces operating costs, upgrades existing drives, increases production, is low maintenance and is easy to operate. The planer drive features PLC-based control system to coordinate the feed speed of drives regardless of roll diameters.