Category: 2019

The value of EU wood furniture production was €41.4 billion in 2018, only 0.8% more than the previous year. This continues the trend of slow, but consistent, annual growth of around 1% in the last 5 years. Despite this growth, the total value of wood furniture production in the EU in 2018 was still 20% down, in real terms adjusted for inflation, compared to the years just prior to the financial crises in 2008. 

Although the EU Timber Regulation (EUTR) has narrowed the supply base for tropical timber imported into the EU, traders in Belgium and the Netherlands strongly support the FLEGT regulatory approach – combining licensing with EUTR – as a platform to help rebuild confidence in tropical timber in the EU market. 

Increasingly the twin concepts of “zero deforestation” and “embodied deforestation” lie at the heart of European policy making, both in the public and private sector, in relation to the trade in commodities from tropical countries. This has significant implications for the tropical wood products trade with potential impacts throughout the supply chain, from the forest through to the final consumer. 

The EU’s trade in tropical wood products was more buoyant in the first quarter this year compared to the same period in 2018. Total imports of all wood products (classified in HS Chapter 44) from tropical countries in the first quarter of 2019 were 525,000 MT, 9% more than the same period in 2018. Import value increased 17% to €561 million. 

ITTO’s analysis of Eurostat year-end data showed that the total value of tropical wood imports into the EU increased slightly in 2018, although at a slower rate than imports from non-tropical countries tropical wood continued to lose share last year (ITTO MIS Volume 23 Number 4 16-28 February 2019).

Analysis of the timber market in Germany, which plays central in the European wood products sector, highlights the extent to which tropical wood is losing market share, with important implications for the long-term future of tropical wood demand in the broader European market. 

The FLEGT Independent Market Monitor (IMM), hosted by ITTO and supported by EC funding, has reported some preliminary results of the 2018 survey of the European trade  (for more see www.flegtimm.eu). 

After a strong start to the year, the trade in wood furniture slowed sharply in the last quarter of 2018. EU imports of wood furniture from outside the region, which were up 6% in the first nine months of 2018, finished the year down around half a per-centage point compared to 2017 at €6.36 billion. This is a reversal of the slow recovery in EU imports that began in 2013. (Chart 1).

EU imports of tropical wood products rebounded in 2018 following a dip in 2017. The pace of tropical wood product imports increased in the second half of 2018 after a slow start to the year. In total, the EU imported 2.09 million metric tonnes (MT) of tropical products listed in HS Chapter 44 (excluding fuelwood, wood waste and chips) in 2018, 6% more than in 2017 (Chart 1). The total value of imports was €2.23 billion in 2018, 4.4% more than the previous year. 

The total value of EU imports of wood products was 19.44 billion euro in 2018, 5.1% more than in 2017. This followed an increase of 2.4% to 18.49 billion euro in 2017. In 2018 EU import value was at the highest level since 2008 just before the global financial crises (Chart 1).