How Rare are ultra-wide and high-grade Oak engineered flooring?—- From the perspective of Wood Resource

1 INTRODUCTION

The ultra-wide, high-grade oak engineered flooring is favored by consumers due to its outstanding performance and generous appearance. However, according to the analysis in the previous article, because of the requirement for very large diameters of raw timber, and high grade requirements for both the raw oak timber and the veneers, the yield of qualified veneers is very low.

This article will take the example of 300mm wide, Grade A oak engineered flooring and, combining actual customs data and market conditions, analyze from the perspective of lamella(veneer) resources why such ultra-wide, high-grade products are so scarce.

2 OAK LAMELLA RESOURCE

2.1 European Oak Lumber Resource

To trace how much available European Oak lamella resources there are, firstly we need to understand the total amount of European oak imported into China.

Here is the 2022 annual customs data for the total amount of European oak logs imported, from major producing countries to the ports in the provinces where our lamella suppliers are located.

Data resource: General Administrations of Customs of the People’s Republic of China

More than three quarters of the European oak logs come from France. Most logs ship to Liaoning and Zhejiang, where our factory operates.

2.2 Maket Analysis

To have a deep understand of how many lamellas available among the whole imported logs, it is important to take a look at the market analysis in the following.

Out of 571,300 m³ of European oak imported, factories use about 50% for flooring production.

From the 285,700 m³ of raw materials for flooring, around 70% goes to the top layer of engineered flooring

Of the 200,000 m³ allocated for the top layer, roughly 80% can be sawn into thick lamella at 3.0 mm or more.

From the 160,000 m³ used for thick lamella, limited log and lumber sizes allow only 15%, about 24,000 m³, for extra-wide products.

Among these, 10% qualify as rotary-cut grade, and 5% as barrel grade, totaling around 3,600 m³ per year.

This is the amount of logs available for extra-wide, high-grade floor lamellas. Next, let’s calculate how many lamellas that meet the requirements can be obtained.

2.3 European Oak Lamella Resource

Based on the calculation that each cubic meter of wood log can yield 25-30 m² of 4.0mm thick lamella, the total lamella obtained does not exceed 100,000 m² per year.

From the perspective of width, according to the product width distribution obtained from the plainsawn pattern analyzed in the previous section, among the lamellas obtained, the proportion of lamellas with a width of not less than 300mm (mainly Grade ABC) is 20%, approximately 20,000 m² per year.

From the perspective of grade, among the 300mm wide lamellas obtained, there are 1,000 square meters of Grade A. Adding Grade B and C after defect removal and resizing, it can reach 1,400 to 1,500 m² per year. Grade B veneers are approximately 3,500 square meters per year (after removing end splits, 1900mm in length). The rest are Grade C or below.

3 OUR SOLUTION

Zhejiang Guolian Flooring Co., Ltd. is located in Deqing, Zhejiang. The lamella raw materials mainly come from the wood processing factories in the Northeast China and the Yangtze River Delta. In addition, in order to expand production capacity, we have expanded our procurement range to the Eastern China. The map below shows the distribution of our company and the main lamella suppliers.

From the map above, it can be seen that our raw material supply sources are widely distributed among major ports and industrial concentration areas. We will continue to make the greatest efforts to collect available raw material supplies for our customers.