Reformation of New Zealand’s wood industry associations into a coherent structure is almost complete, following the September launch of the Wood Processors Association (WPA).

The changes taking place in Asia over the next 20 years will be so great they can best be described as “a massive demographic earthquake”, according to Dr Clint Laurent, founder and chief technical officer of Hong Kong-based Asian Demographics.

As global markets go, India presents an attractive, but complex proposition. It is already one of the largest markets for consumer products in the world and it will get bigger. With a population of around 1.1 billion, India is the world's largest democracy and by 2025, the population is forecast to reach 1.7 billion, which will put it ahead of China.

Tony Davies-Colley didn’t set out to become a sawmiller, but his destiny was, to some extent, preordained. After completing an agricultural science degree he raised much of the finance for a farm (at Purua in New Zealand’s Far North) by cutting wood on contract with a portable sawmill. And he and wife Clare quickly set about planting trees - lots of them.

ITI Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of ITI Australia - that country’s biggest independent softwood lumber wholesaler - is understood to be spending upwards of A$10 million building a state-of-the-art processing operation in Chile, and establishing warehousing and a distribution network, and marketing its products in the United States.

There is nothing haphazard about the fact that Malaysia’s forest products trade is no longer dominated by log and lumber exports. Furniture and plywood now generate 60% of foreign exchange earnings, collectively worth more than RM11 billion annually.

Furniture trade shows are a multi-million-dollar industry in Malaysia - responsible for generating most of the country’s RM6.5 billion annual export furniture sales. But they have recently become a major battleground, with various commercial and sector interests locked in a do-or-die battle for survival and political patronage.

While most other countries would baulk at the audacity and cost of such a vision, there is a plan - and in true Malaysia boleh (can) style, the industry appears to have the political and financial grunt, and enough ‘fourth dimension’ thinking at the top, to pull it off.