Furniture is both one of the oldest and one of the most competitive industries in the world and one of the most important economic sectors in Latvia. Latvia has old and good traditions of furniture production. During the former USSR furniture production was one of the largest industry. [ 5 ]
The furniture was made for the whole Union upon its order through sale agents, without particular architectonic development. Approximately 10% of furniture output of foreign design was exported to capitalistic (that time attribute) countries.
Duo to these traditions the furniture design was not developed in Latvia, and during the first years of independence the furniture production almost stopped. Then the production of furniture boards from massive wood and the production of details begun. Today the production of furniture from massive wood has developed according to foreign experience, at the beginning from pine and later from birch – free and alder. The production of this type of furniture requires a high – level culture of drying of massive wood and its needs complex manufacturing technology. In Latvia there are approximately 10 such companies with about 100 employees working in each of them.
The main problem of these companies is the purchase of qualitative pulp for affordable prices and in the necessary quantities, especially when the production of sawn – wood is concentrated in the large sawmills. [ 1 ]
The wood processing companies can be divided into two groups – primary processing and further processing companies. Analyzing the sector’s production output, it is evident that unfortunately the largest part of the products is primary processing, the further processing uses insignificant amount of the total available resources.
Sawn wood is the primary processing sector’s key production. Sawn wood main consumers are furniture and furniture board producers (32%), construction material producers (windows, doors, floor surfacing, etc.) – 46%, joinery and household producers, including packing material producers. [ 4 ]…
