China leads demand for woodchips

17 August 2013


China has passed Japan as the world’s largest importer of hardwood chips as the country’s demand for paper continues to rise.

There has been a dramatic expansion of pulp manufacturing capacity in the past five years, but because of a lack of competitively priced wood fibre in China, the two largest pulp companies there are importing chips at a prodigious rate.

Wood Resources International said the value of imported wood chips has increased from US$180m to US$1.3bn last year, but experts believe it is probably now closer to US$1.5bn.

Vietnam supplies more than half the total, followed by Indonesia, Thailand and Australia.

Despite this the average cost of imported wood chips declined by almost 6% in the past year.