Taking Stock: The Business At Hand

Some forecasts coming out of APA—The Engineered Wood Association annual meeting in October painted a rather bleak economics picture for 2023. It was no surprise, given the already downward trending in housing starts, the steady upticking in interest rates and the gradual decline in many panel prices toward pre-pandemic levels. Though a couple of attendees mentioned to me that they thought the outlooks came across a little too negatively. “We aren’t there yet,” a producer executive said to me. “We’re doing okay at the moment.”

But barring the unforeseen, 2023 stands to be a challenging year, with some producers weighing production reductions while mill expansions still wrestle with supply chain issues and for that matter decide they aren’t in a hurry anyway.

No doubt many operations are already catching their breath following the tremendous post-pandemic surge. Now it becomes a matter of tweaking and timing.

A soft market is a good time to assess how the operation and mill fared through the hard run during the up market. Certainly through good times or bad most operations have systems and programming, and human beings, in place to provide immediate data feedback, but there’s nothing like a deliberate analysis, the results of which can range from everything to the need for a piece of equipment, to updating systems, to adding QC personnel, to simply a new paint job.

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Article by Rich Donnell, Editor-in-Chief, Panel World