Market Demand and Export of Timber

Presented by

Piyali Dias

World timber market is mainly based on primary timber products such as industrial round wood, sawn timber, wood based panels, paper, paper board and wood pulp. Moreover furniture and builder’s wood work and joinery also play an important role in the world timber market. United States, Canada and the Russian federation are the leading timber producers in the world who makes the largest contributions to the global timber production which is more than 3.4 billion m³ annually. However, more than half of this timber production is gone for wood fuel while the rest of the amount used for timber and paper products where the Europe and the United States act as the world leading timber consumers. According to the recent findings the most demanded timber product was softwood industrial round wood which was produced more than 400 million m³ of timber in the year 2013 in North America. However the highest softwood roundwood flow is going from New Zealand to China where China acts as the main importer of many timber products. Though the tropical timber market is much lower than temperate timer, industrial round woods are the most demanded item among those tropical timber products. The second most demanded item was softwood sawn wood which had a production as well as a consumption of about 96 million m³ in 2013 which was recorded from the European Union. However the wood base panels, paper, paper products and wood pulp have comparatively lower demand in global timber situation where Europe dominate the production of those products in year 2013. Among those products, particle boards have the highest production which is nearly equals to the 35.5% of the total wood based panel production. Moreover the most demanded secondary processed timber product was furniture which had recorded more than $124 million by value in the European Union flowed by the US, Italy and Germany. World furniture production is dominated by Asian countries where China appears as the highest furniture producer in the world. Sawn soft woods are the main exported product which leads the world timber exports in 2013. The Europe was the all-round exporter in each and every type of timber product including round wood, sawn wood, paper, paper board, wood pulp and wood based panels. European exports are increased by 5.6% in 2013 with 46 million m³ by volume of sawn softwood exports to the overseas markets mainly to China and North African countries. However, though the prices of timber products are slightly changing from country to country the highest market prices were recorded for paper and paper boards which is around $ 900 per metric ton while the least prices were recorded for industrial round wood as nearly $ 100 per cubic meter throughout the time period of last fifty years. In temperate region, Hem Lock, Pine, Cypress and Swedish spruce are the main traded timber species while Shorea, Dipterocarpus, Teak and Ceiba leading the tropical timber market. Though Sri Lanka is not playing any important role in the world timber situation by not exporting any timber product instead of re exporting treated, imported Kempus timber by STC while private sector is involving in exports up to some extent. But here they have to overcome some of the legal barriers such as Forest act, Import Export act and Customs act as well as some international standards which set up by world reputed certification systems such as Forest Stewardship Certification, when entering to the global export market.