According to industry experts reports the world financial crisis has put significant drop down at international sales of wood chips, used for pulp fabrication at 2009. The supplies from Australia, South Africa, Uruguay to Japan have encountered the biggest decrease.The average augmentation of international wood chips sales made four percents per year from 2004 till 2008 and got to the point of 32 million tons last year. Such augmentation stopped at 2009 by sales volumes drop down per 26% during the first half of the year in comparison to the same period of year 2008. World financial crisis and decreased demand for paper products had become the direct reason of shipments drop.
According to experts' assessments, only 25 million of wood chips will be delivered world -wide and this is the lowest figure since 2002. Nevertheless, the Japanese pulp mills still remain principal place for world chips transport; 53% of hardwood chips and 15% of softwood chips are delivered by this country internationally, while 12% of international import share belongs to Asian countries such as China, Taiwan and South Korea, though Nordic Countries international wood chips import share has reached the level of 14% this year.
Japan has suffered the biggest decrease of wood chips shipments. The country imported 34% of wood chips less then the same period of six month during the past year, soft wood chips encountered the biggest decline. Nearly all importing countries have reduced their wood buying this year. Only Turkey (softwood), China (hardwood), Sweden (hardwood) and Portugal (hardwood) had grown the level of imported wood fiber.
Australia, South Africa, Vietnam and Uruguay have significantly reduced the wood export in 2009. According to industry experts' information, Australia the biggest international exporter of wood fiber has reduced the wood supplied amount from 3.1 million tons at the first half of previous year to 2.3 million tons for the same period of this year. Uruguay and South Africa have reduced their export amount per 65 and 40% accordingly. Obtained information makes industry experts think that due to slow increase at pulp production and the will of European energy companies to search for additional sources of woody biomass will cause the growth of wood chips sales in the forthcoming year.
