News

Heavy Snowfall and Blizzards Affect Wood Supplies

Last week’s weather conditions with the long-lasting blizzard caused a temporary reduction in the volume of deliveries, as a result of which some log buyers of JSC “Latvia's State Forests” (LVM) experienced a temporary drop in the delivered volumes. Thanks to the wide location of warehouses and operationally coordinated and implemented road cleaning works, as well as the high qualification of the service providers, the delivery process was not completely paralysed, and deliveries continued even on the snowy days.

On the first day of the intense snowfall – 12 December – the volume of delivered logs dropped by approximately half, or from the initially planned 470 loads, only 270 loads of timber were delivered to customers. A similar trend remained on the second day of the week, but as the snowfall stopped, LVM resumed deliveries in the originally planned volume.

“On Monday and Tuesday morning, we informed our transportation service providers about the orange and yellow warning announced by the Latvian Environment, Geology and Meteorology Centre for heavy snowfall, slippery roads and encouraged them to evaluate whether it was possible for them to provide the service, ensuring safe performance of transportation tasks. Within the framework of cooperation between LVM and transportation services, this practice, when the service provider has the opportunity not to perform the service due to safety reasons, is also implemented in other cases of natural “elements”, when the provision of transportation services may endanger the safety of the personnel and equipment involved in the provision of the service, for example, strong wind, hail and dangerous icing on individual road sections. During these days, due to the weather conditions approximately 80 of the 117 timber carriers decided to continue the transportation tasks,” says Mārtiņš Krūze, Executive Director of Deliveries at Production and Delivery of LVM Wood Products.

Thanks to the successful cooperation between LVM employees involved in the supply processes and maintenance of forest infrastructure to ensure the cleaning of forest roads, it was possible to normalize the situation in the second half of the week and organize deliveries, supplying the necessary volumes of wood products to the buyers.