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Amid the slowdown of the economy partly caused by widespread lockdowns over 2022, China has seen its combined imports of softwood lumber and softwood logs decline to 48.5 million m3 , back to the 2015 levels and -30% vs 2021. <\/span>Softwood logs imports plummeted by 38% to 31.2 million m3 while softwood lumber imports declined by 10% to 17.3 million m3 .<\/p>\n The market share of European nations exporting softwood lumber, however, significantly increased. More softwood lumber was imported from Finland (882,000 m3 ; +33%), Sweden (657,000 m3 ; +66%), and Germany (568,000 m3 ; +20%). A significant player in the Chinese market is also Belarus with 625,000 m3 exported to China: +36% vs 2021.<\/p>\n Imports from Russia fell by 8% to 11.9 million m3 . It remains the main player but there is room for other players in the Chinese market.<\/p>\n When it comes to the imports of logs, the most apparent change was the disappearance of Russia among the suppliers of China due to the Russian logs export ban. The market share of Russia has been declining for a few years \u2013 it was still as high as 27% in 2016. In 2021 Russia had supplied almost 4 million m3 of softwood logs to China. New Zealand remains the largest supplier with 17.7 million m3 (-13% vs 2021), followed by Germany with 5.6 million m3 (-52% vs 2021).<\/p>\n Russian softwood lumber exports have declined for several reasons: the Russian timber industry has limited access to the train capacity. The cost of sea-rail combined transportation is high especially for the sawmills in Western Russia. Also, road infrastructure remains comparatively poor and it is tough difficult to get the fiber out of the forest.<\/p>\n There are also challenges connected to the maintenance of harvesting machines. All of these issues might worsen as the war and sanctions continue.<\/p>\n The softwood lumber inventories in the main Chinese markets remain comparatively high but 2023 is an interesting year in China with the re-opening of the economy following the abandonment of the zerocovid policy and preliminary information points to a faster recovery than most analysts expected.<\/p>\n In sum, the outlook for the Chinese market in 2023 seems quite positive:<\/p>\n \u2022 China is still going through a sharp turn, and it will be interesting to see how the recovery will take place \u2022 2023 will be better than 2022 in terms of import volumes<\/p>\n \u2022 Whether it will be a boom year depends largely on the real estate market policies especially in the main cities<\/p>\n \u2022 Need to pay attention to black swan events caused by geopolitical risks. Comparing to the common market factors, black sawn event might be more important for some suppliers.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Amid the slowdown of the economy partly caused by widespread lockdowns over 2022, China has seen its combined imports of softwood lumber and softwood logs decline to 48.5 million m3 , back to the 2015 levels and -30% vs 2021. … Continue reading