Lumber

An organisation aiming to ensure tropical timber is used sustainably across the European Union will be launched next month.

New five-year outlook shows that supply and demand conditions in wood products for the long-awaited ‘super-cycle’ are now taking hold, with the full impact still some 3+ years away!

US lumber markets are finding good support from the US housing recovery. Housing starts are continually increasing and turning into real demand for timber. Saw mills in the US have been burned by predicting housing recovery in the past, and as such have held back from increasing production.

Both demand and prices in the lumber market in the US increased during the second quarter of the year.

Softwood sawlog prices continued their slide throughout the world in the 2Q/12, and the Global Sawlog Price Index (GSPI) was down for the fourth consecutive quarter to $82.90 per cubic meter, according to the Wood Resource Quarterly (WRQ).