Structural sawn wood production in the Chilean sawmill industry, data analysis from surveys carried out for 4 years

Abstract

The sawmill industry produce around of 8 million cubic meters annually, setting Chile as the tenth world producer of sawn wood. Since Chile is a foretry country, the current sectoral policy has among its strategic axis the promotion of quality wood construction. From here it emerges the necesity of reinforce graded structural sawn wood supply, boosting this product demand by the construction industry. In this context, INFOR began to generates specific statistics on structural sawn wood (MAE), this activity accumulates four years of measurments. In the present research, it is presented the main results of the analysis of data obtained from these measurments, through surveying in the sawmill industry. To carry out the survey on MAE (structural sawn wood), sawmills with production higher than 10,000 cubic meters annually were selected, gathering information from a sample of 100 sawmills per year, from 2018 to 2021; these sawmills represents near of 80% of the sawn wood national production. Results indicate that the knowledge about MAE concept has just slightly increased during four years of measurments; while the interest of sawmill in participating in MAE production it is determined by the greater access to higher pirces, a more stable demand, and a greater reliability in logs availiability.