Storm seen blowing life into Finnish timber trade
Copyright 2001 Reuters
November 21, 2001
HELSINKI - Extensive storm damage to forests in western and central Finland may bring some relief to the country's near stagnant timber trade, which is threatening to close sawmills next year, industry officials said yesterday.
According to some estimates, a snow storm two weeks ago and heavy winds at the end of last week have felled over two million cubic metres of wood, or four to five percent of the 45 million cubic metres that the industry buys yearly from private forests.
The industry has complained recently that sawmills have been only able to buy less than half the log wood that they need, but the Finnish Forest Industries Federation said yesterday that wood sales had picked up in recent weeks.
"A storm like this cannot determine the availability of wood to the entire industry as far as the trees to be culled (from the storm) are concerned," said Jukka-Pekka Ranta, managing director of Suomen Sahat, a group of 55 independent sawmills.
"But it may get harvesting started and bring more wood on to the market - that's what we hope," said Ranta, whose organisation accounts for about a fifth of the Finnish sawmilling industry.
That view was echoed by others in the industry.
"The downed trees are often along the edges of open areas, and when they are picked up, it will make sense also to cut some other timber, so this may well bring more (than just the storm-felled volume) onto the market," said Markku Melko, Senior Vice-President at forestry group Metsaliitto.
"We certainly had not hoped for this storm, but the timber trade had been moving too sluggishly relative to the need, and this may improve the situation a bit," he added.
Metsaliitto is cooperatively owned by forest owners, and it wholly owns Finnforest, which is Europe's biggest mechanical wood industry group. It is also the single biggest owner of Europe's largest fine-paper maker M-real .
Pekka Airaksinen, an expert at the forestry and agricultural producers organisation MTK, said the extra wood brought on to the market would be easily absorbed by the market, and the timber trade was likely to quiet down again in December.
According to preliminary estimates, storms last week in western Finland felled about 1.5 million cubic metres of wood, largely spruce, Airaksinen said.
An earlier storm in central Finland and the southern Pohjanmaa region had felled an estimated 600,000 to 700,000 cubic metres of wood, largely pulp wood in younger forests.