Sumitomo Forestry reported a sharp fall in earnings from its timber and building materials business in the first half of 2026, despite handling more logs, lumber and wood chips.<\/p>\n
Sales were broadly unchanged at around \u20ac704 million, but recurring income fell 79% to just \u20ac3.5 million. The margin dropped to 0.5% from 2.5% a year earlier.<\/p>\n
Timber volumes moved in the opposite direction. Sumitomo Forestry handled 486,843 m\u00b3 of domestic logs during January-June, up 7.3% year-on-year. Lumber volumes increased 8.4% to 144,994 m\u00b3, while wood chip volumes rose 9% to 645,004 tonnes.<\/p>\n
Manufacturing accounted for much of the deterioration. Sales increased 17.7% to approximately \u20ac303 million, but the business recorded a loss of \u20ac14.2 million. A year earlier, the same operations had generated a profit of around \u20ac8.4 million.<\/p>\n
The manufacturing business includes doors, stairs and other interior wood products in Japan, wood-based panels overseas and Southern Yellow Pine lumber production in the US. The latter includes the Plain Dealing sawmill in Louisiana, acquired from Teal Jones in July 2025.<\/p>\n
Sumitomo Forestry did not give a detailed breakdown of what drove the manufacturing loss. The figures nevertheless show a marked deterioration: revenue increased by almost 18%, while earnings swung by more than \u20ac22 million from profit to loss.<\/p>\n
The company expects timber earnings to remain weak through the end of the year. Full-year sales from Timber and Building Materials are forecast at around \u20ac1.47 billion, up slightly from 2025, but recurring income is expected to fall 61% to approximately \u20ac29 million.<\/p>\n
Manufacturing revenue is forecast to increase 22% to around \u20ac651 million. Despite the higher turnover, Sumitomo Forestry expects the business to post a full-year loss of approximately \u20ac11.5 million, compared with a profit of around \u20ac10.8 million in 2025.<\/p>\n
Forestry operations also remained in the red. First-half sales increased almost 30% to around \u20ac39.5 million, while the recurring loss widened to \u20ac6.7 million from approximately \u20ac3.5 million a year earlier. The company expects the forestry loss to reach almost \u20ac14 million for the full year.<\/p>\n
The first-half figures show that higher timber volumes have done little for profitability. Sumitomo Forestry is moving more logs and lumber and generating more revenue from manufacturing, but margins have fallen sharply and its manufacturing operations are now expected to remain loss-making for the full year.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Sumitomo Forestry reported a sharp fall in earnings from its timber and building materials business in the first half of 2026, despite handling more logs, lumber and wood chips.<\/p>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":99584,"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-99583","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-daily-news"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n