News in international markets

Mercer International Inc. has announced that it is once again pursuing a new sawmill investment project for the Saxony-Anhalt, Germany region. The original plans were brought to a standstill due to the COVID-19 pandemic. In fact, during the summer Mercer submitted the building application to the responsible planning office of the Stendal district.

According to the U.K.’s Timber Trades Federation’s (TTF) Nick Boulton, TTF’s head of technical and trade, “After a year of record production and nine months of near record structural softwood imports it is highly likely the UK is at a point where there is sufficient volume of wood at UK ports and in the UK timber supply chain to satisfy construction demand.”

For the sixth month in a row, China’s new construction starts declined in September. This is the longest continuous monthly declines since March–August in 2015. According to Reuters calculations based on January-September data released by the National Bureau of Statistics on Monday (10-18-21), new construction starts in September fell -13.54% from a year earlier, the third month of double-digit declines.

Segezha Group has announced that it has agreed to purchase the assets of LLC Inter Forest Rus from Bonum Capital Ltd for $515 million. Inter Forest’s assets include wood processing and logging enterprises as well as four woodworking plants, one plywood plant, a river fleet of 98 vessels, and a substantial forest resource base in the Krasnoyarsk and Irkutsk regions of Russia.

Koskisen Group, a family-owned Finnish sawmill and panel industry leader, has announced a 48 million Euro investment in Kärkölä, Finland. With production scheduled to start in the summer of 2023, the unit’s new annual production will initially be 400,000 m3 of softwood sawn timber.

The Binderholz Group has reached an agreement to take over BSW Timber Ltd., the U.K.’s largest forestry and sawmill company. An agreement with Endless LLP., the largest shareholder, to acquire their shares has been reached.

According to information released on Monday (10-11-21) from the Central Statistics Office (CSO) — the statistical agency responsible for the gathering of “information relating to economic, social and general activities and conditions” in Ireland — loggers harvested almost four million cubic meters of wood from deciduous trees in Irish forests in 2019.

Help to support Australia’s booming housing construction industry will soon be on its way. Up to 60,000 tons of softwood logs, some of them bushfire-affected, will soon be shipping off of Kangaroo Island.