Mills across Japan produced 19,000 cubic metres of cross-laminated timber last year, 3.8 per cent of the volume the government’s own roadmap now targets, with output falling 9.5 per cent in the first decline since at least 2020. That is according to annual timber statistics from the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries, first reported by Rinsei News, which also records glulam production dropping 3.6 per cent to 1.691 million cubic metres.
“500,000 cubic metres of CLT supplied each year stably,” reads the goal at the centre of the fourth CLT roadmap, which the inter-ministerial council on wood materials adopted on 31 March to run to 2030. Getting there from 19,000 means building the industry 26 times over inside five years.
Cabinet added its weight seven days before those numbers appeared, approving a five-yearly Forest and Forestry Basic Plan on 5 June under a subtitle promising a forest nation and timber towns lasting a hundred years. The document names CLT and two-by-four exports among its measures, and commits Japan to 23 million cubic metres of domestic construction timber by 2030.
Japanese mills had the fibre to work with, taking 20.071 million cubic metres of domestic logs as the home-grown share of everything they processed climbed 0.7 points to 88.6 per cent. Barely one cubic metre in a thousand of it is left as CLT, and the share itself measures mill intake rather than the wood self-sufficiency rate, counting imported lumber, plywood, and pulp, which stood at 40.7 per cent in 2022.
Plywood took the growth, cross-laminated timber did not, drawing 7.4 per cent more logs into its mills while laminated veneer lumber output rose 6.3 per cent and ordinary plywood added 2.3. Chip demand fell, while sawmilling held flat, leaving structural panel as the one product class expanding on Japan’s own log supply.
Growth had run unbroken through the decade before the fall, with production climbing from 13,000 cubic metres in 2020 to 21,000 in 2024 and more than 1,700 CLT buildings completed by the time the third roadmap closed in March. The factory count moved in the opposite direction over the same stretch, from 11 plants in 2021 to 9.
Sawmill numbers fell by 124 to 3,423 over the year, extending an attrition that has been running since 2004, when the country counted 9,420. Larger operators have absorbed what the closures released, with 38 mills each consuming more than 50,000 cubic metres of domestic logs a year, now taking 35 per cent of the national total.
It comes as the Forestry Agency concedes a supply problem within the plan itself, putting replanting after final felling at just over 50 per cent, short of what continuous rotation across a 10-million-hectare planted estate requires.
Demand has moved ahead of the production line, with Tokyo market-insights firm Meuka reporting that banks are easing lending criteria for timber projects across regional Japan and that inquiries for wooden non-residential buildings have climbed from 2 or 3 a year to 30.
“That makes mass timber in Japan far more bankable today than a year ago,” Danny Kontos said of the seismic and fire-resistance advances now carrying timber into the mid-rise offices, clinics, and schools where CLT competes.
