Navigation
Search
What is the fair price of wood?
Olli Dahl wrote:
Forest industry in Finland has been claimed that the price of wood is too expensive for their conventional processes such as saw mills, chemical pulping and paper making. Whose fault this situation really is?
The Finns’ main problem is too high production capacity in wrong place – especially in south-eastern Finland. There is no more cheap wood available for the mills, since the Russians want to develop the forest industry of their own. Due to lack of wood in south-eastern part of the country many other places in Finland will suffer from this self-inflicted problem. Is it right that some areas in Finland will only be wood reserves in the future and too long transport distances of raw material will cause additional carbon dioxide emissions?The forest industry in Finland claims that Finnish forest owners do not sell wood for them as much as the industry would want them to sell. The question is whether one wants to sell one’s supply of wood with lower price than six months ago to an industry that only aims in maximizing its own business profit and is claiming that all significant investments will be done in developing countries!
How can we objectively estimate the right price of wood? Is it right that faceless forest industry set the price or should it be so that both the forest industry and the forest owners deliver the possible financial profit more evenly?
Unfortunately, the price of wood will be set by its energy content and follow the price of crude oil in the near future. Using this estimation the price of wood should be much higher than it is now. At least now all the people involved in the forest industry should understand that we will be in deep trouble if we cannot make new innovations which give surplus economical value for the forest products. Realizing this and following it would also make it possible to pay fair price of wood for the forest owners.
Well written Olli. You hit
Well written Olli. You hit the nail on the head with: “Unfortunately, the price of wood will be set by its energy content and follow the price of crude oil in the near future.” I tend to see future threats as opportunities. The issue is that materials made out of oil have to be processed and this costs money. Our benefit is that we already have a vast amount of usable chemicals and materials present in the wood infrastructure. Our challenge is to develop separation techniques. The sulphate process maybe isn’t after all the ultimate way to do this:-) Pulp is pretty simple product compared to the potential of wood, but still pulp is much better business today than burning the trees. My worry is merely do we have enough expertise in chemistry, materials and new business creation to utilize the potential that has been in front of our eyes (in wood) allways? My suggestion is that we stop talking about pulp and paper and change that to renewable biomaterials! This is what we actually do.