Like other raw materials, the prices for lumber shot up to unprecedented heights last year.\u00a0It wasn't just finely processed wood that was affected by this price hype, construction timber has also become significantly more expensive and, depending on the quality, could sometimes only be obtained by accepting longer waiting times.<\/p>\n
The Austrian federal forests, which manage around 15 percent of the Austrian domestic forests (Bundesforste), have also achieved higher sales prices, but do not see themselves as winners of the price boom.\u00a0The sawmill and timber industries were the primary beneficiaries of last year's hype, said Rudolf Freidhager when presenting the forest strategy.<\/p>\n
The price curve is also pointing upwards outside of Europe<\/strong><\/p>\n Freidhager, who is responsible for forestry and nature conservation on the board of the Bundesforste, said that the Bundesforste had earned 67 euros per solid wood meter from the forest road in the previous year, ten euros more than in 2010. \"But our best year so far was 2014, we realized an average wood price of 79 euros per solid meter from the forest road,\" the Bundesforste board clarified.<\/p>\n And 2022?\u00a0Lumber prices in Europe, Japan and the US all trended upwards.\u00a0Freidhager: \"We believe that we too will raise the price of wood by a few euros this year.\"<\/p>\n This is also necessary in order to be able to cope with the increasing costs that forest managers such as the federal forests are incurring as a result of climate change. In the previous year alone, the state-owned company incurred additional costs of 31.5 million euros, twice as much as in 2017 (15.7 million) - additional costs that are directly or indirectly attributable to the rise in average temperatures. The bark beetle infestation is just as important as damaged wood due to extreme weather.<\/p>\n The 31.5 million are less than the record sum of 48 million euros that had to be spent by the federal forests in 2020 to eliminate damage caused by climate change;\u00a0that could be different again this year or in one of the following years.\u00a0In terms of costs, climate change has always been in the top three.<\/p>\n Of the damaged wood incurred in the previous year, 550,000 cubic meters were beetle wood, 270,000 were windthrown, 220,000 were snow debris, and 25,000 solid cubic meters were other.\u00a0The bark beetle infestation was particularly large in Lower Austria and parts of Styria.\u00a0Infested trees have also been discovered in areas that are difficult to access, which makes processing difficult and drives up costs.<\/p>\n Concerns about EU initiative<\/strong><\/p>\n The Federal Forests have major concerns about the forest strategy pursued by the EU Commission.\u00a0According to this, ten percent of the forest areas in Europe should be preserved as CO2 sinks in the long term, or at least not used economically.\u00a0Especially in heavily forested countries like Germany, Finland and also Austria, this endeavor finds little understanding except among environmentalists and some non-governmental organizations.\u00a0The same goes for the federal forests.<\/p>\n They already have about nine percent of the forest areas they are responsible for out of use, for example in national parks;\u00a0However, it is to be feared that if the quota were broken down for each state, the federal forests would have to take on a disproportionately large amount, especially since private forest owners resisted tooth and nail and see this as an act of expropriation.\u00a0\"Wood is one of the few raw materials that we have in Austria,\" said Bundesforste board member Georg Sch\u00f6ppl.\u00a0\"We shouldn't let that one out of our hands.\"<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Like other raw materials, the prices for lumber shot up to unprecedented heights last year.\u00a0It wasn’t just finely processed wood that was affected by this price hype, construction timber has also become significantly more expensive and, depending on the quality, … Continue reading