For the last four years, the European forest and sawmill industry has been experiencing increasing pressure from both exports of logs and imports of cheaper wooden finished products.
Some blame the global economy and free trade agreements for the loss of competitiveness of our industry, others blame EU regulations for always implementing more standards, codes, safety issues, testing, controls… increasing the cost of producing in Europe while not applying the same production burdens on imported goods.
But maybe Europe has a very naïve understanding of free trade. While the European house has all its doors and windows open, what are our suppliers and competitors doing?
In Africa, countries are banning or limiting the amount of round logs being exported in order to develop the primary wood-processing industry and add some value to their export.
In China and India higher taxes on sawn timber help their local industry to import cheaper logs and thus help develop the production of added-value products.
Russia, after having decided to tax the export of logs, which has greatly impacted the industry in Scandinavia, is now negotiating with Europe on its access to the WTO, not by changing its policy but only by proposing quotas and smaller taxes on some specific species.
The US has decided to impose import duties on Chinese multi-layer parquet as a consequence of Chinese factories enjoying state subsidies.
Now that the wood market is picking up, log availability is becoming a major concern for the European wood industry. From a problem mainly focused on hardwood some years ago, we can now see an increasing trend toward shipments of softwood logs to the other side of the world. Apart from some specific products with no market in Europe, this trend is leading to a fierce competition on raw material, increasing production costs in Europe and driving the European wood sector into competitive danger and ever higher price differentials between local goods and imported goods.
? TTJ Industry Updates are a forum for trade bodies to address key issues.
