Industrial use of Recent Plantation as an Alternative to Conventional Raw Material

Supply of conventional raw material for wood based industries is shrinking day by day. The solution lies in the use of alternate raw materials. Plantations of several fast growing species have been done on a large scale in different parts of the country. While parts of these plantations are basically meant to reduce the pressure on already over exploited forests to meet the demand of fuel wood, remaining may be diverted to raw material starved wood based industries like paper, panel products and for solid wood utilisation like construction, joinery and furniture and other specialised uses. Studies have been undertaken recently at the Forest Research Institute to find the suitability of these plantation woods for different industrial uses and to modify the processing techniques and production processes to make them suitable for different industrial uses. The results of these researches have been reviewed in this paper.