world news - 03.08.2007

High hopes on cooperative to boost Japanese forest industry

By April 2008, the government hopes that a new lumber cooperative, Kumamoto Lumber Cooperative, will boost Japan’s forest industry. As part of the Forest Agency’s “new production system”, the cooperative will consume 4,400 m³ of local cedar logs and will eventually generate JPY2,334 million yen. The coooperative will be subsidized by the government’s biomass promotion policy.

On the distribution side, the Forestry Agency’s “new distribution system” has ended its three-year run. The initiative provided government grants to businesses in an effort to promote utilization of domestic resources for plywood and laminated lumber. The total amount of domestically consumed species by the subsidized facilities was 1.21 million m³.

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