DHA® eNews - Which Paint Colors Will Dominate In 2019?
Decorative Hardwoods Association® President Kip Howlett spoke at the World Resources Institute's Forest Legality Week about how tariffs, duties, and legality impact wood products trade flows and how these changes make tracing the source of legal timber particularly challenging. The international event drew participants from governments, the private sector, the scientific community, and timber certification organizations.
At the event, EIA distributed its report on African log bans and the need to reform Chinese investment and trade in Africa's forest sector. Soon to come: the public premiere of EIA's new documentary on the Peruvian forest.
Source: Environmental Investigation Agency
The International Wood Products Association, representing importers, took issue with the Wall Street Journal article stating that many Chinese hardwood plywood exporters are intentionally using misleading wood export identification codes to avoid tariffs. The increase in code classification rulings, according to IWPA, is a sign that importers in this high tariff environment are checking if products are properly classified. No data is reported if products are classified accurately.
HPVA Laboratories® has awarded EPA TSCA Title VI and CARB Phase 2 certification for formaldehyde emissions to the Ply-Tech hardwood plywood manufacturing facility in Glasgow, KY, confirming that Ply-Tech's products meet or exceed these standards.
HPVA Laboratories® has received official accreditation from the IAS for the ASTM E1354 fire test: heat and visible smoke release rates using a cone calorimeter.
Kristine L. Juster, a member of the Kimball board of directors since 2016, has been appointed as the company's chief executive officer effective November 1. Kristie comes to Kimball International with over 20 years of experience as a global executive at Newell Brands.
The EPA has issued a draft proposed rule with technical amendments to TSCA Title VI to make it easier for companies to demonstrate that they meet the EPA standard. HPVA Laboratories® has been a driving force for the proposed changes, which include removing annual correlations between a third-party certifier's chamber and each mill's quality control chamber, averaging emission test results from quarterly testing, updating correlational coefficients and R-value alternatives, clarifying that labels on compliant products are required at point of entry in the U.S., and more.
The outlook for home builders is less than encouraging - in direct contrast to the favorable outlook for multifamily developers and the remodeling and renovation industry, per Ivy Zelman. Bloomberg economist Mark Boud agrees that "we're in the top of the eighth inning of housing's six-plus-year-old housing recovery."
The AIA's monthly Architecture Billings Index hit 51.1 in September, recording the twelfth consecutive month of gains. The ABI is a reliable indicator of the level of U.S. construction activity in nine to twelve months.
Pending home sales increased 0.5% in September after nine months of decline.
The NAHB Remodeling Market Index was 58 in Q3, about the same level as in Q2. The RMI has been consistently above 50 since 2013.
CITES rejected Madagascar's most recent plan to sell off its illegally logged rosewood stockpiles, primarily because the plan included paying the illegal rosewood loggers with money from the sale.
The quantity of timber harvested from national forests in the Pacific Northwest has increased to about 650 million board-feet in 2018, the highest volume in two decades.
Canadian government scientists are becoming increasingly worried about the impact of climate change on northern forests.
A new study by the University of Amsterdam suggests that the climate benefits of sustainable forests will be modest and local rather than global.
In a massive effort to eliminate outdated and polluting wood processing mills, the Chinese government closed about 3,000 plywood manufacturing facilities and closed or relocated more than 900 particleboard production lines.
China has successfully planted a forest as big as France - 30,000 hectares - in the isolated, formerly barren Qinghai Tibet Plateau.