NEWS
First Field Survey (Feng Xiaohan)
Hello everyone.
My name is Feng Xiaohan, and I am a first-year master's student in the hyakumura lab.
I visited a timber company in Saga Prefecture on November 2021, 11, and would like to introduce it to you.
My research interests are Japanese timber distribution, wood shock, and sustainable forest management, and as a preliminary investigation, Professor Hyakumura and I, the graduate students, visited Imari Wood Market Co., Ltd. and Nakamura Sawmill Co., Ltd. in Saga Prefecture.
In the morning, we visited the Imari Wood Market Head Office. The teacher had made an appointment for us in advance.The company's employees were very kind to us. Mr. Yoshimura from the Business Management Department handled the interview and gave us a tour of the site. Mr. Yoshimura gave us a detailed introduction to the company's history and the recent state of the timber market. The Imari Timber Market was established in 2004 with Chugoku Mokuzai Co., Ltd., and has become the largest timber market in the Saga region. At the same time, the Imari Timber Combinat was formed with the West Kyushu Timber Business Cooperative Association and Chugoku Mokuzai Imari Office, building a timber supply chain in the Kyushu region. In recent years, in response to the proposals of the Forestry Agency of Japan, the Imari Timber Combinat has been smoothly implementing supply chain management initiatives, building a highly efficient timber supply chain.
Yoshimura also showed us around the lumberyard. The logs lined up at the site are mainly cedar and cypress. All the logs are neatly sorted and their sizes are clearly marked. The Imari Wood Combinat is equipped with equipment to sort lumber by size, but the lumberyardThe scale of the event is impressive, with huge amounts of wood lined up on the pit, creating a magnificent sight.
Finally, we thanked the company staff, took a photo together, and thus ended our visit to Imari.
In the afternoon, we visited the Nakamura Sawmill Head Office in Saga City, Saga Prefecture. The president of Nakamura Sawmill, Mr. Nakamura, is an acquaintance of the professor, and treated us kindly. President Nakamura and the general manager, Mr. Koga, said,Nakamura Sawmill introduced the company's efforts regarding sustainable forest management. First, I introduced how Nakamura Sawmill handles FSC (Forest Stewardship Council) forest certification. Nakamura Sawmill sells FSC products, and users can protect forests by prioritizing products with the FSC® mark. In recent years, forest conservation has been advocated as essential to achieving carbon neutrality by 2050 and the SDGs (Sustainable Development Goals). In order to manage and operate forests sustainably, the FSC forest certification system was created to certify forests that are properly managed. The wood products sold by Nakamura Sawmill are high quality and, above all, environmentally friendly, which I was very impressed by.
Next, we were introduced to "SKINWOOD," a product that Nakamura Sawmill is proud of. As the name suggests, "SKINWOOD" is a new veneer made by joining together young trees (small-diameter wood) and slicing them thinly. Nakamura Sawmill is the only company in Japan that has this technology. Until now, I had no idea that there was a technology that could slice wood as thin as paper. Due to costs, the surface of many furniture materials is paper with a wood grain pattern printed on it, but this does not restore the texture of real wood. But "SKINWOOD" can. This product is used in several important architectural and craft items, and it is expected that this technology and product will spread throughout the world in the future.
This concludes our visit to lumber companies in Saga Prefecture.
During this visit, I was able to gain good experiences about Japan and learned a lot. I will continue to work hard to continue my research.
Imari Wood Market Co., Ltd. website:http://www.imarimokuzai.co.jp/index.html
Nakamura Sawmill Co., Ltd. website:https://kanejin.jp
Feng Xiaohan