In Finland, wood prices have risen clearly since the end of 2021. The prices of pulpwood have risen, regardless of the wood species, by more than 50 percent and, for example, the price of a pine log by more than 20 percent.
UPM Metsän manager of a private timber store Janne Kiiliäinen raises three reasons for development in the Markkinaraati program.
“Finland’s operating environment has changed completely over the past two and a half years,” Kiiliäinen begins.
“Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine closed the border and the import of wood stopped. Quite large investments in the forest industry have been made in Finland. And as a third factor, energy production, where the end of coal and the very large cutting of peat has then focused the demand on energy wood”, Kiiliäinen lists.
Kiiliäinen considers the current price level “unsustainable”.
“If you look at the price development of wood in Finland and look at the price development of the end product market, it can be concluded that it (the price) is at an unsustainable level.”
Providing services for forestry Innoforin managing director Erno Lehto on the other hand considers that there is no great downward pressure.
“Such a drop to the level of a few years ago is not necessarily coming right away,” says Lehto.
MTKresearch manager of Kalle Karttunen estimates that the slowly recovering economy will maintain the demand for wood and that the prices of wood products have good prospects in the longer term.
Innofor’s Lehto, however, sees that in the future the forest owner can get an increasingly larger share of the forest’s yield from things other than wood. He refers especially to the ability of forests to bind carbon dioxide. MTK’s Karttunen also sees opportunities in this for the forest owner in the longer term.
“However, the main income still comes from wood sales,” says Karttunen.
Source: www.arvopaperi.fi
