Over his career Dave Bramlage has seen the US hardwood business transformed. The vice-president sales at Cole Hardwood Inc and immediate past chair of the American Hardwood Export Council (AHEC), started at the former, then called Shafer Lumber Company, in 1979. At the time the US hardwood sector was primarily focused on domestic sales. It serviced a few mature overseas markets highly successfully, but many mills viewed exports as supplementary to US business.
“The attention exports got reflected the state of domestic sales; when the US market picked up, exports dropped off and vice versa,” said Mr Bramlage.
Today, he added, that picture could not be more different. The hardwood sector must now rank as one of America’s most exportoriented industries and its perspective is truly global. It sells a greater variety of species to a wider range of foreign markets than any time in its history.
And the cause of this dramatic evolution, which has seen the sector go in less than two decades from selling under 15% of its lumber output abroad to well over 50%.
“It’s been partly driven by necessity,” said Mr Bramlage. “The economic crisis and American housing crash resulted in a 50% fall in US hardwood output. Mills had to find new markets to survive.”
But another factor also lies behind American hardwood’s evolution into a truly exportoriented business and that, maintained Mr Bramlage, has been the worldwide promotion and market development activity of AHEC. “Over the last 20 years AHEC has been at the cutting edge of what’s happening in our industry,” he said. “It’s been that step ahead, predicting what’s coming down the line and really driving export markets; or in the words of AHEC European director David Venables, ‘doing the visionary stuff business hasn’t got time to do’. It’s developed a dedicated team worldwide and created such an identity for American hardwoods, I can travel anywhere, say I’m in US hardwood, and get AHEC mentioned back to me.”
Core to AHEC’s achievement, he said, is that it’s taken a 360° promotional focus, highlighting US hardwoods’ performance, aesthetic and environmental credentials. Through initiating showcase construction and manufacturing projects, it has also encouraged architects, designers and engineers to push technical boundaries, leading to increasingly innovative applications in the market.
Cole Hardwood’s export development in the last two decades and the benefits it has drawn from AHEC’s work have mirrored those of the wider US hardwood industry. Mr Bramlage joined the Indiana lumber company in 1980 with a degree in natural resources and masters in geography from Ball State University.
“I began in the concentration yard, carrying boards pile to pile,” he said. “I planned on staying a year, but found it so interesting, one year became 38!” After moving through the sales ranks, his first working contact with AHEC came around 20 years ago.
“This industry’s move to exports has been the phenomenon of my career, but Cole started out fairly modestly, firstly in Europe,” he said. “We then identified Japan as the biggest potential market in Asia – I even started learning Japanese – and we subsequently looked to Taiwan. Our focus on the rest of Asia, notably China, came after that, which is when I started working with AHEC’s John Chan, who was instrumental in getting our business there started.”
The rest, as they say is history. Like much of the US industry, over subsequent years Cole saw its Chinese sales climb steadily and then, from the 1990s, exponentially. That, said Mr Bramlage, was when the emergence of China’s middle class started to impact trade and its domestic wood product consumption to soar. “It’s been a remarkable change. In 2000 just 15% of US lumber shipped to China was consumed domestically, the rest re-exported as manufactured goods. By 2015 AHEC figures show that division completely reversed, with China also now buying our full range of species and grades.”
The question naturally arises as to whether US lumber producers might now have too many eggs in the China basket. But AHEC still sees further growth potential as the country focuses on developing its vast western hinterland.
What is perhaps concerning, Mr Bramlage acknowledged, is recent growth in US log exports to China.
“US log exports overall have not increased, but more are heading to China. Currently they’re mostly going to vertically integrated manufacturers processing logs to supply their finished goods production. But the worry is the possibility of mills setting up to cut American logs to produce lumber for third parties. That could impact both our raw material supply and lumber sales to China.” Against this eventuality AHEC is continuing to promote US hardwood to the still growing Chinese lumber market – increasingly via its architectural and design community – but developing its focus on other markets too.
“It was also my ambition as AHEC chairman to collaborate with associated US trade organisations to develop more co-ordinated strategy on such issues as Chinese log imports, to mutual benefit across our timber and forestry sector,” said Mr Bramlage. “In the US we’re still quite a fragmented industry, but there’s huge strength in speaking with one voice, as we do via AHEC abroad.”
EUROPEAN MARKETS
While US hardwood export growth since the 1990s has come from Asia, Mr Bramlage insists this has not resulted in any less emphasis on long-established European markets.
“European buyers remain among our most valued customers, taking a lot of prime grade,” he said. “Europe is also significant as a global leader in terms of new timber product development and applications in architecture and design. Where Europe goes, the rest of the world often follows.”
This is reflected, he said, in the fact that AHEC’s European office has initiated so many showcase projects in association with leading architects, designers and manufacturers, not just to demonstrate, but to develop US hardwood’s construction and manufacturing potential. It also runs student competitions to engage European specifiers of the future. A key recent focus has been architectural and engineering projects highlighting hardwood’s structural capabilities in the groundbreaking form of engineered and thermo-treated timber products.
All originally displayed at the London Design Festival, the Timber Wave demonstrated red oak’s capabilities in laminated form; the Endless Stair tulipwood’s strengths as cross laminated timber (CLT); and last year’s The Smile comprised the first use of industrial-scale structural hardwood CLT panels. These are effectively shop windows for US hardwood and garnered international media coverage worth millions of dollars in equivalent advertising space.
And construction projects these have directly or indirectly inspired recently include the new Maggie’s Cancer Care centre in Oldham, billed as the world’s first permanent building in hardwood (tulipwood) CLT, and the Warner Stand at the iconic Lord’s Cricket Ground in London. The latter features a canopy supported by 11 23m US white oak glulam beams from Hess Timber in Germany. “These projects are an incredible inspiration to the market and the US hardwood industry itself, really demonstrating the performance possibilities of our timber,” said Mr Bramlage. “Working with the world’s most creative people also means others want to talk to you. It gives us that foot in the door.”
AHEC’s efforts have also been targeted at demonstrating US hardwoods’ carbon and wider environmental benefits. Research highlighting timber and wood product life cycle assessment superiority has been a strong focus and the just revised Seneca Creek illegality risk assessment study has also proven increasingly valuable, given the global spread of market legality requirement regulation, like the EUTR. “AHEC’s recently developed American Hardwood Environmental Profile (AHEP), also has great market potential. It effectively provides an environmental passport, providing evidence of everything from a shipment’s origin, its legality and sustainability, to LCA and carbon footprint data. Its new interactive map, which gives US national and regional forest distribution, growth and removal figures, is also a significant development,” said Mr Bramlage. “Importantly these tools offer alternative evidence of sustainability to certification, which is requested by many export customers, but is just not viable at scale in the fragmented US forest sector, where land owners like me hold average timber lots under 50 acres.”
Overall, he maintained, AHEC is doing “an excellent job conveying the greenness and sustainability of the US hardwood industry to customers worldwide”.
NEW OPPORTUNITIES
For the future, Mr Bramlage sees a range of markets for AHEC to develop globally. “Certain parts of Africa are very viable, India is showing signs of life as a lumber market, the Middle East offers exciting opportunities and South America is relatively untapped,” he said.
He also sees opportunities to use the experience gathered by AHEC worldwide to help develop the US hardwood market.
“In the US we don’t yet have the relationships with designers and architects we do in Europe, but we’re pulling that list together,” said Mr Bramlage. “It’s very exciting that US architects IKD recently designed the Conversation Plinth, America’s first hardwood CLT construction demonstration project in Columbus, Indiana. It drew on inspiration from The Smile, but using five species.” There are also great possibilities, he maintained, for the US hardwood sector to build awareness of its environmental credentials at home as it has done abroad. “What we need is an AHEC for the American market!” he said.
