Entire wood panel industry is badly suffering due to acute shortage of unskilled manpower, which has led to drop production of ply-boards by half. The Plywood sector pan India from North to South and East to West have been feeling helpless to complete their supply chain, and pending orders are tolling pressure on producers. Although the labor crisis scenario happens every year during this period, but the situation this year are prevailing for long duration. Presently contractors are unable to ensure availability of labor even when wages have increased by 20 % in last 2-3 years.
The labor crisis also hits the production in Laminates, Furniture, Saw Mills along with services at distributors, dealers point because they don’t have adequate staff for loading purpose and so is the scenario at interior projects sites. The rise in production capacity of plywood and laminates has also shot up by 25 % due to commissioning of new plants and expansion at existing units. To meet the growing production, more labors are needed but producers don’t know the possible solution except contracting. Many have started providing facilities like ESI, Medical, PF, quarters etc to workers so they have better availability despite of crisis.
The infrastructural development and increased spending on projects to complete before 2019, has also engaged labors thus making scenario difficult for wood panel industry even in future. Wood Panel Industry is largely taking steps hence setting up modern machines and adopting automation to reduce 25-30 % of manpower requirement. In present times, plywood industry is going through various changes and one is the transformation taking place in Face veneer segment.
In this May 2018 issue we have published detail coverage of the two successful seminars on “Possibilities of Okume Face Veneer Acceptance” organized by Ply Reporter at Yamunanagar and Bareilly. These two seminars were aimed to spread the Knowledge and need of change in face veneer species for industry to obtain affordability for their offerings. The finding and view of industry leaders during seminars have been presented in detail which is worth reading. Specially those who were unable to attend the seminar can also benefit from it. The next seminar on similar topic will be held in Kerala this month. Apart from these, a number of market reports on Face Veneers, Plywood price hike, Laminates, PVC Mica, ACP etc are published that could be vital for better decision making at businesses.