Global Sawmill Cost Benchmarking Service

How do your margins stack up globally?

Make confident decisions about cost competitiveness across 25 of the world’s major lumber-producing regions.

FEA’s Global Sawmill Cost Benchmarking Service empowers timber and lumber companies to evaluate how net wood costs, sawmilling expenses, and revenues compare with global peers. By providing a clear view of margins across key regions, we support your critical decisions on pricing, market strategy, capital allocation, and sourcing, ensuring you remain competitive in an evolving global market.

With valuable cost data going back to 2000, FEA is the industry’s only source of harmonized, insightful, and global benchmarking data.

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Why Monitor Costs?

Regional and global competitiveness is never static. As markets evolve, margins tighten, and sawmills adjust capacity, industry leaders require current benchmarks to understand a range of metrics:

  • Shifting Cost Positions: Identify where competitive advantages are improving or deteriorating.
  • Competitive Margins: Evaluate performance across diverse producing regions and trade flows.
  • Cost Drivers: Analyze the specific variables that cause margin variances between regions.
  • Market Exposure: Access the impact of import competition and shifts in global export markets.

The service provides a clear, consistent framework for analyzing industry costs and competitor performance, allowing leadership to replace assumptions with data-driven confidence.

About the Service

FEA’s Global Sawmill Cost Benchmarking Service represents the next evolution of our long-standing biennial study. While maintaining the rigorous detail and depth the industry expects from FEA, this enhanced service is now updated on an ongoing basis to provide subscribers with more timely, actionable data.

Each release provides quarterly cost data for the previous two years, covering 25 regions across the globe. Our results are built on a foundation of proprietary data collected from sawmills, industry associations, and government sources—all synthesized by FEA’s global team of analysts and validated by decades of benchmarking expertise.

  • Why This Service Is Different

    • Continuous Intelligence, Not a Snapshot: Regular updates ensure your benchmarks remain relevant as markets and cost structures evolve.
    • Harmonized Global Methodology: Our standardized definitions for costs and revenues enable accurate, meaningful comparisons across diverse international regions.
    • Primary Data + Expert Synthesis: We combine direct industry inputs with rigorous vetting from FEA’s integrated global research network.
    • Decision-Grade Detail: Benchmarks cover the full margin bridge—from forest through conversion costs to final revenues and profitability.
  • Typical Use Cases

    Subscribers rely on this service to drive high-stakes decisions and strategic clarity:

    • Evaluate Global Competitiveness: Assess performance across your entire supply chain—from regional wood baskets to national markets—to discern your true standing against international competitors.
    • Refine Margin Strategies: Inform pricing and sales strategies with a deep understanding of peer cost structures and revenue realization.
    • Optimize Capital Allocation: Guide strategic planning and investment by identifying regions with a sustainable competitive advantage.
    • Strengthen Procurement Decisions: Support sourcing and wood-buying strategies through standardized comparisons of delivered log costs.
    • Mitigate Market Risk: Proactively manage risk by monitoring how shifts in capacity and market dynamics impact regional cost structures.

Key Features

  • Standardized Global Benchmarking: Quantify and compare cost competitiveness across 25 major lumber-producing regions with a consistent methodology that ensures accurate cross-market analysis.
  • Granular Cost Profiles: Access detailed regional profiles for both log supply and sawmill manufacturing costs, providing the data needed to understand regional competitive drivers.
  • The Full Margin Bridge: Gain a comprehensive view of the entire value chain—from log costs and sawmilling expenses to lumber yields, by-product revenues, and final realized margins.
  • Quarterly Time-Series Data: Track performance over time with quarterly data for the past two years, allowing you to see how regional competitiveness shifts through market cycles.

Scope and Detail

For ease of comparison between countries and regions, all costs are summarized in three currencies—US$, CA$, and EUR—and presented in both m3 and MBF.

Our methodology captures the entire cost structure, from forest to mill gate. Timber costs include stumpage fees and logging/delivery expenses, while sawmill profiles detail direct costs, labor, overhead, and capital. This standardized framework enables subscribers to analyze cost structures, revenues, and margins with total consistency across all 25 regions.

  • Cost and Revenue Metrics

    Comprehensive cost and revenue measures for the following:

    • Fiber Sourcing: Stumpage, logging to roadside, and hauling to mill
    • Log Costs: Total delivered log costs
    • Manufacturing: Logs-to-lumber costs and conversion recoveries/yields
    • Operating Expenses: Labor, direct, and overhead costs
    • Revenue: Lumber and by-product revenue realization
    • Profitability: Pre-tax profit (EBITDA) and after-depreciation margins (EBIT)
  • Mill Statistics

    Additional mill statistics:

    • Production Profiles: Average log size and average production per mill
    • Product Mix: Kiln-dried and planed-lumber share of total production

Global Coverage

Our benchmarking service spans 25 key producing regions across the globe:

  • North America

    1. US South–West
    2. US South–Central
    3. US South–East
    4. US West–Coast
    5. US West–Inland
    6. BC–Coast
    7. BC–Interior
    8. Canadian Prairies
    9. Ontario
    10. Quebec
    11. Atlantic Canada
  • Europe & Russia

    1. Finland
    2. Sweden
    3. Germany
    4. Austria
    5. Czechia
    6. Latvia
    7. Russia: Siberia
    8. Russia: Northwest
    9. Russia: Far East
  • Southern Hemisphere & China

    1. New Zealand
    2. Australia
    3. Chile
    4. Brazil
    5. China

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Ready to benchmark your global competitiveness?

To discuss subscription options, contact Matt Robertson, Director of Sales, at +1 (978) 496-6338 or sales@getfea.com.

Product samples, service walk-throughs, and analyst Q&As are available upon request.