“I believe that if supply at home increases considerably, we will try to increase the share of domestic wood, and that will make it possible to reduce imports. This would suit the situation,” says Pekka Rajala of UPM.
Both UPM and the other forest industry giant Stora Enso note that harvesting trees that have been blown down by severe weather is more expensive than normal felling of trees, which could lower the price paid to forest owners for the wood.
However, even though the amount of wood that has been blown down in the storms is greater than initial estimates suggest, the impact on the overall price level of wood is expected to remain small.
“This amount is still small on the national scale. If our purchases of wood from private forests is between 40 and 50 million cubic metres a year, and if this ends up being a couple of million cubic metres, then it will not have much of a national impact,” says Jorma Länsitalo, director of forest activities at Stora Enso.