Welcome to Finnish Sawmills

Finnish sawmills association was founded 1945 to take care of the interests of family owned sawmill companies. Association has currently about 40 member companies, which produce over 3 mil cubic meters (m3) sawn timber and developed products. About 60 % of the production will be exported all over the world. However the main export countries have been Europe, North-Africa and Japan.

The mission of the association is to develop the business of the member companies. This will be made in co-operation of the active export, raw material and technical councils who are controlled by the board of the association. The highest ruling body of the association is the annual meeting, which takes place twice a year.

The main activities are market information, raw material and by product co-ordination and joint projects which are decided every year in the autumn annual meeting. Association also carry out lobby activities when it comes to political or/and administrative targets. Also the pr- and press activities are regularly taken care of by the association officials in co-ordination with the member company representatives.

The production of the member companies is mainly pine (pinus sylvestris) and spruce (picea abies) timber and developed products. Timber is always kilned dried and the deliveries are very often tailored according to the needs of the customer. The member companies follow in their grading the “Nordic Blue Book” rules and the business is heavily leaning on long lasting customer relationships.


Jukka-Pekka Ranta, Managing Director, Finnish Sawmills Association
                                             14.01.2009                                

THE MARKET CHANGE WILL TAKE PLACE WITHIN SHORTLY

Rawmaterial supply for sawmills is tightening before summer

The three big forestry enterprises (Stora Enso, UPM and Metsaliitto) accounts about 70 % of the logging activities in Finland. Due to crisis in paper and pulp market they less demand for pulp wood at the moment. Moreover, they have pulp wood stocks enough until autumn already. This means that most of the logging activities in Finland are or will be stopped temporarily. UPM stopped their loggings on March, 9th and could not say when they will re-start. Stora Enso will stop their loggings for April, May and June completely – not a single tree will be cut down. Metsaliitto has so far announced about 1 month break in logging. Stora Enso made a decision to stop their Enocell pulp mill in Uimaharju for the rest of 2009 due to problems in pulp & paper market. The published production curtailments and shutdowns of pulp- and paper mills mean a reduction of roughly 8.000.000 cbm in the consumption of pulpwood. This will have a major impact on the logging in Finland.

Independent sawmills have relatively better situation

The small and medium size sawmilling industries have less logging resources of our own. Complete stop in logging of the big companies will mean that sawmills do not get enough logs to keep up normal production of sawn goods during this spring and summer. We cannot utilize our own capacity properly because we should get rid of pulp wood at the same time. Our own loggings are thus limited because of this pulp wood dilemma. When you cut forest you will have plenty of pulpwood in addition to logs. Of course independent sawmills are relatively in a better situation thanks to their small log cutting capacities as certain part of the pulp wood can be used for sawn timber production. Also the forest owners are very much aware about the importance to assist sawmills to survive in the wood markets.

Jukka-Pekka Ranta, Managing Director, Finnish Sawmills Association
Read more                                             31.03.2009