{"id":76278,"date":"2018-08-23T11:03:07","date_gmt":"2018-08-23T11:03:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/tin.happy-projects.ro\/major-structural-change-underway-african-timber-industry\/"},"modified":"2025-09-19T08:48:49","modified_gmt":"2025-09-19T08:48:49","slug":"major-structural-change-underway-african-timber-industry","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.timberindustrynews.com\/ro\/major-structural-change-underway-african-timber-industry\/","title":{"rendered":"Major structural change is underway in the African timber industry"},"content":{"rendered":"

A major structural change is underway in the African timber industry as operations are reoriented away from the European market towards Asian markets.<\/em><\/p>\n

This change is driven by factors both on the supply-side, particularly declining availability of timber species of interest to the European market; and on the demand-side as consumption is weakening in Europe at a time when demand in Asia is rising rapidly.<\/p>\n

Although this shift has been going on now for over a decade, the full implications were laid bare in March this year with the announcement that the Rougier holding company was to be placed under court-ordered receivership proceedings in France with a view to rolling out extensive restructuring actions.<\/p>\n

This event is encouraging a reassessment of the future role of European forest operations in the African region, and of the continuing validity of a business model heavily dependent on the profits anticipated from the sale of third party certified tropical wood products and other ecosystem services in \u201cenvironmentally-aware\u201d markets of richer industrialised nations.<\/p>\n

These issues are explored in two recent trade articles, one by Alain Karsenty , the Research Director of CIRAD, the other by Emmanuel Groutel , an independent expert on the African timber industry currently affiliated to Caen University in France. These articles refer respectively to the \u201ccrises\u201d and \u201cbrutal weakening\u201d of European-owned forest and timber operations in Africa in recent years.<\/p>\n

These events raise, in the words of M. Groutel, profound questions about \u201ctheories of change of all policies and projects currently underway that rely on the link between responsible companies and the European and American market\u201d.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>According to M. Karsenty, the bankruptcy filing of Rougier has come as a particular shock to Europe-based tropical forestry professionals because the company, which was founded in Niort in 1923, is \u201cone of the oldest and largest timber companies in Africa\u201d which is present in Cameroon, Congo and, since 2015, in the Central African Republic (CAR) and which owned over 2.3 million hectares and employed 3,000 people, mainly in Africa.<\/p>\n

During the on-going restructuring process, Rougier has disengaged from all African operations, except those in Gabon. In a transaction concluded on July 16, 2018, ownership of four Rougier subsidiaries - Soci\u00e9t\u00e9 Foresti\u00e8re et Industrielle de la Doum\u00e9 (SFID), Cambois and Sud Participation in Cameroon and Rougier Sangha-Mba\u00e9r\u00e9 (RSM) in the Central African Republic \u2013 was transferred to Sodinaf (Soci\u00e9t\u00e9 de distribution nouvelle d'Afrique), a Cameroonian company.<\/p>\n

Financial difficulties of Rougier part of a wider problem<\/strong><\/p>\n

M. Karsenty highlights that the financial difficulties of Rougier form part of a wider pattern of failure by European operators in the African tropical wood sector.<\/p>\n

The Dutch-owned Wijma Cameroon Group sold four of its five forest concessions in Cameroon to a competing company (Vicwood SA, headquartered in Hong Kong) in 2017. The Italian company Cora Wood SA, a well-known plywood manufacturer operating in Gabon, had to sell one of its concessions to a Chinese company to pay off its debts.<\/p>\n

M. Karsenty notes that \u201crumours are rife about possible future disposals of other European companies in Gabon or Congo\u201d.<\/p>\n

As M. Karsenty observes, the reasons given by the Rougier management when filing for bankruptcy this year refer to problems that are common to the entire tropical timber export chain in Africa. These include on-going serious problems and delays with shipping out of Douala port in Cameroon and delayed payment of VAT refunds by African governments, partly linked to low oil prices, which created additional financial challenges for operators in the region.<\/p>\n

While these problems impact on all operators in the region, they have fallen particularly heavily on Europeanowned companies because of weak and declining consumption of tropical timber in the European market; the declining availability of African wood species that satisfy the narrow preferences of European buyers; and the particularly low profitability of certified sustainable timber operations which receive little or no market premium for higher operating costs.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A major structural change is underway in the African timber industry as operations are reoriented away from the European market towards Asian markets. This change is driven by factors both on the supply-side, particularly declining availability of timber species of … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":59298,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4716,4715],"tags":[3641,3393,3774],"class_list":["post-76278","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-latest-trends","category-market-analysis","tag-africa","tag-industry","tag-tropical-timber","topic-forestry","topic-sawmilling","area-africa"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nMajor structural change is underway in the African timber industry - Timber Industry News<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.timberindustrynews.com\/ro\/major-structural-change-underway-african-timber-industry\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"ro_RO\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Major structural change is underway in the African timber industry - Timber Industry News\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"A major structural change is underway in the African timber industry as operations are reoriented away from the European market towards Asian markets. 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