Taiwan woodworking machinery exports and imports up.

The U.S. woodworking industry in 1992 was Taiwan's biggest woodworking machinery customer, purchasing $1.7 billion from the Far East nation and increasing Taiwan's woodworking machinery exports 22 percent over 1991 figures.

The increase helps make the Taiwanese woodworking machinery industry, an industry heavily dependent on strong overseas sales and market diversification, the third largest supplier of woodworking machinery in the world behind Germany and Italy.

In addition, Taiwan's 1992 imports of woodworking machinery increased 50.8 percent over 1991 figures, resulting in a total of $76.2 million spent on foreign woodworking machinery.

These figures were made available by the China External Trade Development Council (CETRA) when WOOD & WOOD PRODUCTS attended the 1993 Taipei International Woodworking Machinery Show in Taipei, Taiwan. The show, which ran from Oct. 15-19 at the Taipei World Trade Center, was co-sponsored by CETRA and the Taiwan Association of Machinery Industry (TAMI).

Combatting growing pains 

Regarding Taiwanese woodworking machinery exports, business with the United States has been good. But Taiwan's woodworking machinery industry has experienced some growing pains and machinery manufacturers are sharing information with each other to try to solve such problems as supplying an adequate labor force and finding a way to compete with other southeast Asian countries.

Finding enough skilled workers to fill positions at manufacturing facilities has become a challenge for owners not only in the United States, but also in Taiwan.

"There are not many Taiwanese interested in manual labor jobs as everybody tries to scramble up the education ladder," said L.C. Chou, chairman of the woodworking machinery committee of TAMI, during his opening ceremony presentation at the Taipei show. "However, like it or not, somebody has to do the job and money is a key to enticing people to manual jobs. But with higher wages, products cannot be competitively priced when faced with competition from other Southeast Asian nations who have cheap, plentiful labor. This makes it very difficult to maintain any sort of profit margin at all."

Not only is skilled labor valued in Taiwanese woodworking machinery production, but also in the country's furniture production. Taiwan furniture manufacturers between January and June 1993 exported $339 million of wood furniture to the US., an increase of 4.7 percent over 1992 first half figures, according to U.S Dept. of Commerce figures.

"Taiwanese companies are investing huge sums in research and development in order to produce even more high-tech goods and specialized goods in order to corner niches in the market," said Chou. "This also helps ease competition in many of the southeast Asian nations that have cheap labor and do not have the resources and equipment to produce high tech goods."

Imports up

Keeping exports ahead of imports is a major concern in the Taiwanese wood-working and woodworking machinery industries. One solution these companies are striving for has been to improve the reputation of Taiwanese wood components and woodworking machinery globally.

"In the past, Taiwanese woodworking machinery overall had a reputation of poor quality because of inefficiency and poor management in our industry," said Bih-Yu Chang, president of Sheng Yuan Woodworking Machinery, a manufacturer of moulders. "But today that reputation is slowly improving due to an industry commitment to advanced technology, improved customer service, lower maintenance equipment and stronger Taiwanese woodworking machinery trade group communication."