One of the more encouraging, not to say surprising, hardwood market trends in 2021 was a strong revival in demand in Italy, a country marked by an almost continuous decline in consumption in the previous decade and which suffered severely from the early effects of the COVID pandemic in 2020.  Italy experienced a large increase in hardwood consumption during 2021 as the construction and furniture manufacturing sectors were both growing strongly during the year. Prospects for continued consumption growth in 2022 also seem good, the main concerns now being on the supply side.    ...