Steady increase in global trade of wood chips the past ten years; Japan and China imported ...:
The global pulp industry has increased its importation of wood chips the past ten years, reaching the second highest import levels on record in 2012, reports the Wood Resource Quarterly. Japan, China, Finland and Turkey were the largest importing countries last year.
Wood chips are one of the few forest products commodities that have seen a steadily increasing trend in globally traded volumes the past decade. With the exception of 2009, when global production of pulp fell by about ten percent and the demand for wood fiber was down, international trade of wood chips has increased every year from 2000 to 2011, as reported in the Wood Resource Quarterly.
From 2009 to 2012, global chip trade increased by 6.5 million tons to just over 31 million tons, valued at over five billion US dollars, slightly below the all-time high reached in 2011. Much of the increase in chip imports has been because of the expansion of MDF production capacity in Turkey and due to major investments in pulp capacity in China.
