On March 7th, Timber Development UK chaired an all European meeting with leading timber and sawmilling associations to facilitate coordination across the continent as the UK begins imposing a ban on all timber trade from Russia and Belarus into the UK. In 2021, the UK imported close to $208 million of softwood lumber from Russia which was 5% of their total lumber import volume last year. The UK also imported close to $50 million in Russian panel products in 2021 of which the majority was birch plywood or 6.3% of their hardwood plywood imports. The impact of an all European ban on Russian hardwood plywood will impact the entire European furniture market this year. Both Finland and Latvia produce birch plywood however there is no excess capacity from those producers right now to make up for the shortfall.
Ukraine supplies roughly 20% of the import market for Oak into Europe. 100% of the sawmill industry in the Ukraine is shut down right now as Europe is just getting into their spring building season. The total affects of the overall shortage of oak that Europe will see this year will dramatically affect a market that is already seeing a shortage of fiber. It’s time for US hardwood lumber producers to sharpen their pencils and check on container rates to main European ports.
Overall, Russia supplies 10% of the European softwood market. These restrictions will have a major impact on lumber supplies throughout Europe. Russia supplied Europe with roughly 2 billion board feet of timber in 2021. If 100% of this Russian fiber is no longer going to ship to Europe this year, they will need to keep a lot of the fiber that has been coming to the US back in Europe. In 2021, Europe shipped close to 1.5 billion board feet to the US. How soon will Europe ask those sawmills to start supplying the domestic market demand and reduce the volume they are shipping to the US?
Central Europe over harvested their logs by close to 30% over the past 3 years in order to get ahead of the beetle kill issues there. They are now to the point where most of those logs have been harvested and they are back into fresh log stands again. The government owned timber harvests moving forward will be reduced by 30% over the next few years to make up for the over harvesting that had to be done. This will dramatically impact the log supplies for all European sawmills.
@Matt_Layman@william_giguere@Jim_Schumacher@Michael_Haas
You guys gotta read this. Do you think there is a risk of significantly reduced euro lumber exports to the United States this building season? Should we start thinking about the impact this will have on the US lumber market? In 2018, when Euro came off-market for being off grade, the market hit all-time highs…
@Neill_Gibson Are you hearing anything from any of the European mills about this? Is there any way to estimate how much wood we should expect to be imported into the US this upcoming season compared to last?
Hey Hardwood guys, are you looking into the euro market for Oak right now? It might be time to consider… @Marcus_Grooms, Will Frankin, David Uria, Tony Cimorelli, Tina Chaffin, John Barry, Stephen Coppola, @Garren_Hitner, Tommy Spencer, David Hunter, David Cox
Given the current situation in Ukraine Russian wood will not find its way to Europe or The United States. David Stallcop is right on. European mills will focus on supplying their domestic market. Russian sawmills are setting up to cut for other markets, China, India & North Africa. When the dust settles some Russian mills will not switch back to US specs. The majority of cargo lines will not take new Russia-USA bookings. In fact, they are offloading containers that are currently onboard in St Petersburg.
