Forest products

Over the past 20 years, pulp mills in Eastern Canada have consistently had higher wood fiber costs than the mills in the Western provinces with the exception of a short period in 1995, according to the North American Wood Fiber Review.

Exports of pulp from Indonesia should gain momentum in coming months, adding further instability to the market. The increased supply of raw materials from Indonesia, mainly to Chinese customers, due to local government approval for the planting of forests in new areas,  can lead to higher capacity utilization of factories. There is a new factory, in Kerinci (Sumatra), which should start producing 850 000 tones.

The latest EU trade data indicates that imports of tropical hardwood logs into the region have continued to fall during the course of 2010. Overall imports during the first nine months of 2010 amounted to only 253,300 cu.m, 22% down compared to the same period in the previous year. The big decline in imports from Gabon following the country’s log export ban imposed from May 2010 has been only partially offset by increasing imports from other countries in the Congo basin.

Swedish Forest Society's timber manager Magnus Juntikka is critical to the speculation about the lower Russian wood tariffs.

Södra, the Russian bank VEB and Angara Paper have signed a Letter of Intent regarding a pulp mill project in Russia with a capacity of 1.1 million ton softwood pulp per year.