Domestic Particle Board demand is growing with increase in plants and capacity in the country. From 236.2 crore in FY 15-16 to 222.6 crore in FY 16-17 marks a big 6% drop in particle board imports. With increasing domestic production capacity, the import of particle boards had seen a huge drop of 40 percent compare to the situation five years ago till last year.During 2012-13, Particle Boards import were at Rs. 316.27 crores but now it is almost down by 100 crore thus clearly replacing imports of Particle board to domestic produced boards.
Particle Boards prices in Asian countries reported steep rise due to high cost of wood, resin and increasing demand in China. The impact of price rise was also seen in India when imported Particle Board witnessed a price jump by 20% during March 2017. The price gap further strengthened the scenario for Indian producers who have been registering above 15 % annual growth since last few years.
Despite of hiccups on availability of raw material, the capacity addition in particle board manufacturing is taking place, be it bagasse or wood. India has been adding approximately 600 cubic meter production capacity of particle boards every year from last five years and the trend is continued. Last year alone there were Five new particle board lines installed in Gujarat alone hence adding a net of 700 cbm daily capacity in existing 3000 cbm volume.
Gandhidham based ‘Mapple Panel’ and Surendranagar district based ‘Salasar Laminates group’have increased their particle board production capacity on the basis of wood waste procured from imported timber sawing dust in and around Gandhidham. Morbi too emerged as a small wood based particle board manufacturing cluster. With 20 particle boards units, Gujarat stands a leading manufacturing state of Particle Boards in India.