CEI-Bois – the voice of woodworking in Europe – has worked through EuropeanWood to facilitate exports of wood products to Japan.

“Recognition of the CE marked products for 2”x4” construction timber is a major breakthrough in our efforts to harmonise standards between Europe and Japan,” says Jan Söderlind, chairman of EuropeanWood.

Previously, European 2”x4” producers for structural usage needed a JAS certificate (Japan Agriculture Standard). Pine and spruce are included in the first sage but other species will be added.

CEI-Bois represents the interests of more than 350,000 companies with a turnover of around 180 billion euro in the EU27 and more than 2.4 million employees.

The event draws thousands of industry leaders and decision makers from around the world for “the global gathering of the hardwood community.” Details about the event can be found at www.nhlaconvention.com.

No longer just a ‘green’ advocacy group, MTC is also considered as the main global representative for the Malaysian timber industry – particularly within the European timber trade.

In the past 20 years, the council has defended and grown Malaysia’s share in traditional markets, and paved the way for acceptance of Malaysian timber products in newer markets like the Middle East.

The MTC’s stated mission is to ensure the sustainability of the Malaysian timber industry by improving its competitiveness, enhancing market access and creating trade opportunities.

Three years after Australia’s Rudd government announced its intention to shut the door on shonky wood products, a Senate committee is doing a final cut-and-polish before the Illegal Logging Prohibition Bill 2011 is offered up for Royal Assent.

And even then, with the legislative horse seemingly bolted, a working group will be fine-tuning a couple of gnarly sections of the Bill of vital importance to the liberty of timber traders – legitimate or otherwise.

Continuing ambiguity in the drafting has got officials in New Zealand and Papua New Guinea sufficiently concerned to make urgent submissions. And the full spectrum of Australian wood industry groups is similarly trepidatious.

The Australian legislation (and similar law in other countries) is clearly intended to strangle the life out of the trafficking of illegal wood – largely, but by no means exclusively, of tropical origin. Instead, there is a real possibility that low-risk and legitimate operations will also be caught up in the process, and deemed guilty until proven innocent.

 Check out the latest submissions here: http://www.aph.gov.au/Senate/committee/rat_ctte/logging_2011/submissions.htm.

(Photo: Scott Burrows

Editor’s Blog: There is a disease with a lethal liking for pine trees called terminal crook. And now there is an even more unsightly, pleasure-stunting blight on our landscapes called crook terminal.

Domiciled as I am in the fair but architecturally challenged city of Cairns in Australia’s Far North, we have a serious case of crook terminal syndrome in the form of the ‘newish’ domestic airport building. And at the other end of the spectrum, there is the delightfully restored and much-admired Cairns Cruise Terminal.

I have no insight into how the final designs for the Cairns domestic airport were arrived at, but the concrete bunker result certainly ticks the cyclone-proof and termite threat boxes. As to the rest, one can only surmise the architect was from a very arid place, because there is almost no consideration for the fact that it rains in the tropics – quite a lot!

If you arrive in a downpour (they occur almost daily between January and March), your bags and their contents will literally pour off the carousel. And when you step outside, it starts all over again: no covered parking, continuous roofed walkway or cover between footpath and car at the public pick-up area. You simply get soaked.

More galling to this old timber guy is the fact that the Cairns airport is overlooked by high hills, cloaked in some of Australia’s most important natural rainforest. Yet timber finishes or wooden artworks evoking those ancient organisms are virtually non-existent within, or without.

As Canadian architect Michael Green said on a recent visit, “More architects need to tell their clients, ‘sure, we can do you a building; but if you are interested in doing a great building, you will want it done in wood’.”

Thankfully, that is the case across the city where a $40 million wharf improvement scheme includes the fully restored early 1900s timber and corrugated iron shed now proudly and stylishly established as the Cairns Cruise Liner Terminal. Other timber-prominent buildings and public spaces will follow – proving, as a local engineer told me, that timber construction in the tropics is, and always has been, perfectly possible. You just have to go about it the right way.

We talk to the cruise liner terminal architects about timber construction, and other things, in the March edition of timber+DESIGN.

(Editor, Tony Neilson: info@timberdesignmag.com)

The full story and photos about the Zuster brand and its huge success in Australia will feature in the March edition of timber+DESIGN (subscribe now).

The New Zealander describes wood as “the only true material” and has achieved celebrity status at the top end of design. The full story is in the next issue of timber+DESIGN (subscribe now).