New record high for globally traded wood chips
in 2016 with
the Pacific
Rim accounting for 70% of total imports followed by Finland,
Sweden
and
Turkey,
r
eports the Wood Resource Quarterly.
Over the past 15 years, global trade of wood chips has gone up almost 75%, mainly
because of major expansion of pulp capacity in China, reports the Wood Resource
Quarterly. By far the two largest importing countries are
China and Japan, followed by
Finland,
Sweden and
Turkey.
Global trade of wood chips has seen spectacular development
the past 15
years with a steady increase of
about four percent annually (volumes y
ear
-
over
-
year
were
up
11 of the past 14
years)
, according to the Wood Resource Quarterly
(WRQ)
. In 2016,
an estimated 35.6
million tons were shipped, predominantly to pulp mills
in China and
Japan, which can be compared to
only
21
million tons 15 years ago. While trade of
hardwood
chips reached
a record high in 2016, shipments of
softwood chips have levelled
out the past few years
with 2016 volumes being slightly lower than the ten
-
year
average.
Japan and China are by far the two dominant consumers
of globally traded wood chips.
Their dominance
is particularly accentuated for hardwood chips,
where they imported 84
percent of the world’s total
imports in 2016, up from 75 percent in 2007.
C
hina
has
surpassed Japan as
the largest importer of chips in the world, and with
expansion of pulp
capacity on
the horizon in China, it
is likely that the country will be the number one
destination
for wood chips for
many years to come.
The major sources of hardwood chips for the two
dominan
t importers include (in ranking
order in the
4Q/16); Vietnam, Australia, Chile and South Africa.
The biggest change on
the supply side the past three
years has been
the
sharp increases in hardwood chip
shipments
from
Australia
,
South Africa,
Brazil and Chile,
while exports have
fallen from
Indonesia, Uruguay and Thailand.
About 30% of global chip trade occurs outside of the
Pacific Rim with Finland,
Sweden
and
Turkey
being the major destinations. The Finnish forest industry
has long been reliant
on both logs a
nd wood
chips from neighboring Russia and the Baltic States.
In 2016,
Finland imported almost 1.7 million tons of
chips to its country’s pulp industry,
of which
a
majority
was
softwood chips from Russia. Current import
volumes are down about 25%
from five
years
ago, partly because of increased availability of domestic
chips and higher
usage of pulplogs.
The f
ifth
country on the ranking list for chip importers
in 2016 is Turkey, which has
become a major chip
destination in just the past five years. This is
the only
major country
that is not importing wood fiber for the
manufacturing of wood pulp. Instead, the imported
wood chips are consumed by a large and expanding
MDF industry.
Gl
obal
lumber, sawlog and
pulpwood market reporting is included in th
e 52
-
page quarterly
publication
Wood Resource Quarterly (WRQ). The report,
which was
established in 1988
and
has
subscribers in over 30
countries, tracks sawlog, pulpwood, lumber and pellet prices, trade
and market developments in most key regions around t
he world.
To subscribe to the WRQ,
please go to www.woodprices.com.
Source: WRQ
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