2017

2016 - a Year of Challenges

"2016 was not an easy year, but the future should not be viewed with foreboding," Roberts Strīpnieks, Chairman of the Board of JSC "Latvia's State Forests", characterises the last year's situation in the forest industry. The activity of JSC "Latvia's State Forests" is closely related to wood processors' work, and the situation in foreign end-product markets also affects prices in Latvia.

Roberts Strīpnieks: "The chaos in the Middle East, which had already begun in 2015 made a large proportion of entrepreneurs who worked with countries such as Egypt experience a serious fall. A third of the top-quality sawn timber produced in Latvia is exported to the UK, and due to the fall of the British pound the business profitability in this country has been severely undermined. The slump of the British pound against the euro reached 12% and, naturally, in such a difficult and unstable market there will always appear dempingers who will complicate the situation even more. All this has led to a steady downturn in the end-product prices; also sawnwood markets are witnessing a price drop, especially with regard to pine sawnwood, to a lesser extent - spruce. The warm winters and rapid growth in wood pellet production across Europe has left a devastating impact on the prices of and demand for by-products of wood-processing industry and forestry - chips, firewood, sawdust.”

All in all, Roberts Strīpnieks, Chairman of the Board of JSC "Latvia's State Forests", is cautiously optimistic about the year 2017. In his view, however, wood by-product market will be the biggest challenge for all of us working in the forest sector. Unfortunately, there are still no solutions for this issue.