Deforestation and the development of the Iranian wood industry

The raw materials of Iran's plywood industry are procured from the northern forests of Iran, and development of the plywood industry is intensively related to the situation of these forests. Previous research has indicated that the future development and location of plywood units in Iran will be highly dependent on the northern forests of Mazandaran & Gilan provinces, which have the second and fifth priorities among thirty provinces in this regard. Annual and per capita deforestation is a key factor in development planning, and the structure and operations of all sections of the wood industry, including plywood, needs to take account of this. In this research, we have estimated the number of plywood units required over an extended future period, taking into account annual deforestation, durability of the forests and per capita deforestation, using case study and exponential smoothing methods. The results have shown that the plywood industry will need to establish new plants, area of the forests will decrease by half, and per capita deforestation will increase in the coming decade.