A birch sawmill is shutting down after three consecutive loss-making years, as high birch sawlog prices and weak demand for furniture and interior products make operations increasingly difficult to sustain.<\/p>\n
Vanh\u00e4lls S\u00e5g AB, located in Dalarna in central Sweden, is ending operations after three years in the red. The mill is owned by brothers Per St\u00e5hl and Erik St\u00e5hl.<\/p>\n
Per St\u00e5hl told Swedish agricultural newspaper ATL that the company had been squeezed by rising birch sawlog costs while demand for finished products weakened.<\/p>\n
The pressure on raw material intensified after Russia\u2019s invasion of Ukraine disrupted exports of Russian birch. Swedish pulp producers subsequently increased purchases of domestic birch, pushing competition for the species higher and lifting prices.<\/p>\n
For Vanh\u00e4lls S\u00e5g, those higher costs could not easily be passed on to customers. Birch lumber is widely used in furniture and interior products, and weaker construction activity has also hit demand in related markets. St\u00e5hl said one of the company\u2019s customers, a Polish subcontractor supplying Ikea, had reduced its workforce from 1,350 to 900 employees and cut one production shift.<\/p>\n
He said even Ikea was struggling to maintain sales volumes.<\/p>\n
The mill has also faced a growing administrative burden from certification and traceability requirements. St\u00e5hl said the company had received a 40-page EU-related questionnaire from Ikea concerning packaging reporting.<\/p>\n
He described such requirements as well-intentioned, but said they can weigh heavily on smaller companies.<\/p>\n
Birch log shortage persists after storm Johannes<\/strong><\/p>\n The outlook appears more positive at another major Swedish birch sawmill, Bj\u00f6rktr\u00e4 Timber AB, although access to suitable raw material remains difficult.<\/p>\n The company, based in G\u00e4vleborg in central Sweden, is also dealing with high birch sawlog prices, but demand across its customer base remains solid. Chief executive Per-Anders Frans\u00e9n told ATL that the company is running at full capacity and remains optimistic about the future.<\/p>\n Bj\u00f6rktr\u00e4 Timber\u2019s procurement area was among the regions most heavily affected by storm Johannes around the turn of the year. The storm created a very uneven supply situation between softwood and birch.<\/p>\n Conifer sawmills have had access to large volumes of storm-damaged timber, while birch remains scarce.<\/p>\n Frans\u00e9n said many birch trees remained standing during the storm, while harvesting crews have focused on recovering fallen timber. As a result, Bj\u00f6rktr\u00e4 continues to face a strong need for additional birch sawlogs despite abundant storm wood in the wider region.<\/p>\n The company invested in a new sawing line in 2022 and has room to increase production over the longer term.<\/p>\n Frans\u00e9n said better cooperation across the forest supply chain is needed to make sure sawlog-quality birch is separated and directed to sawmills rather than being absorbed into other industrial uses.<\/p>\n The procurement areas of Bj\u00f6rktr\u00e4 Timber and Vanh\u00e4lls S\u00e5g partly overlap. Frans\u00e9n said some of the raw material previously supplied to Vanh\u00e4lls could eventually become available to Bj\u00f6rktr\u00e4.<\/p>\n The closure removes one birch processing site from the Swedish market, but the underlying raw material problem remains. Competition for suitable birch sawlogs is still high, while demand conditions differ sharply between producers and end-use markets.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" A birch sawmill is shutting down after three consecutive loss-making years, as high birch sawlog prices and weak demand for furniture and interior products make operations increasingly difficult to sustain.<\/p>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":100098,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"Default","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5204],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-100097","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-daily-news"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n