In the various Paperitalo Publications we offer to Internet readers and listeners each month, we concentrate, for the most part, on pulp and paper and the news about the mills and companies that produce them. But to report only on pulp and paper is to neglect the large part of the forest products industry that owns woodlands, grows trees and sells the wood from those trees. In the Final Word column published in Nip Impressions on April 4, we hit the high spots of some of the global trading in pulpwood, lumber and raw wood mostly in the form of chips. In this article, we will delve into more depth on the subject. And again, we are indebted to our friends at Wood Resource Quarterly for many of the international numbers and trends which follow.

To quote ourselves, and we will try not to make this a habit, we reported in that Final Word column, "Most of the largest softwood lumber-consuming countries increased their imports of lumber in 2015, pushing the trading level to its 10-year high." What follows is a look at export and imports of wood around the globe by regions.

North America--The US lumber market surged, at least internally, as a result of the resurgence of the housing market, which is strong and apparently getting stronger. This trend resulted in domestic lumber consumption climbing almost 5.0% from 2014, but local hunger for lumber and a weak Asian market resulted in less lumber being exported in 2015 than in the preceding year. Export shipments were down 9.7%, while imports (largely from Canada) were up 10%. In 2014, US timber shipments reached a value of $9.7 billion, which was 6.5% of the value of all worldwide shipments.

Canadian producer were quick to take advantage of the rising US domestic lumber market, and their lumber exports reached an 8-year high. They shipped 9.2% more lumber to the US than in 2014. But Canadian shipments to China, Asia's largest timber importer, fell more than 13% to the lowest level since 2010. In 2014, the value of Canadian wood shipments was about $127 billion, 9.0% of the world total.

Northern Europe--Lumber prices in the Nordic countries are heavily influenced by the rise and fall of the US dollar versus local currencies, the Euro and the Swedish krona. A rising dollar equals lower prices locally. In the Scandinavian lumber market, the big guns are Sweden and Finland.

In 2015, the exports from Swedish sawmills rose almost 5.0% from 2014 levels, reaching their highest point since 2006, while prices fell almost 30% from the five-year high reached in March 2014. Germany, the Netherlands and China were Sweden's best customers.

The trend in Finnish wood production was similar to that of Sweden, with higher export volumes, principally to China, Japan and Israel.

There is a considerable amount of trade in unsawn logs in Northern Europe, as every country wants to do the value-added in its own bailiwick. The major log flows are Norway to Sweden (softwood), Latvia to Sweden (softwood and hardwood), Russia to Finland (softwood and hardwood) and Estonia to Sweden (hardwood). Ten years ago, Russia exported about 7.5 million m³ of softwood logs to the Nordic countries, but this has fallen to just over one million m³ a year in 2015. The log market in the Baltic region is one of the most active in the world, amounting to 20% of global trade, with shipments of hardwood logs reaching almost 29% of word trade in temperate climate hardwoods in 2015.

Speaking of China--Russia is now the largest supplier of lumber to China, with a market share of 52% in 2015. Russia's exports to China were up by almost 20% over 2014. But the value of those shipments kept falling and falling. At the end of 2015, values were 24% lower than in the final month of 2014. Chinese lumber import prices reached their lowest level in more than 10 years. In 2015, more than half of world chip exports were sent to China, which has surpassed Japan as the major destination of Australian eucalyptus chips.

Speaking of Russia--Russia continues to be the world's second-largest softwood lumber exporter, behind Canada. This large country, with uncounted hectares (2.7 acres per) of boreal forest in its wood basket, accounted for about 22% of all globally traded lumber in 2015. But Russian lumber export prices have been trending downward for two years. Thanks to the weak ruble, Russian pulp mills have substantially lower fiber costs than competitors around the world.

In South America--Chile's exports of wood (lumber and chips) reached a value of $2.3 billion in 2015. Chilean production in 2015 amounted to 1.8% of worldwide wood exports. Brazilian wood exports were also worth $2.3 billion in 2015, and amounted to 1.6% of global wood exports.

Chips from Down Under--Australia has increased exports steadily, climbing from being the world's fourth-largest exporter of hardwood chips in 2012, to second place, behind only Vietnam in 2015. Wood Resources International calculates that about one-third of the world trade in hardwood chips are currently originating from eucalyptus plantations in Australia. Other major chip-supplying countries include Vietnam, Thailand, South Africa and Indonesia.