Since the beginning of this year, affected by extreme weather such as heavy rain and drought, coupled with the rise in crude oil prices, the output of many major timber producing and exporting countries in the world has declined, and the price of timber in the international market has risen. But overall, the global timber market has a good recovery prospect in the first half of the year. In the second half of the year, due to the continued high temperature and dry weather, global inflation is high, which brings great uncertainty to the second half of the year.
Domestically, due to the implementation of epidemic prevention and control measures in my country in the first half of the year, it has had a greater impact on logistics, transportation and market recovery. From January to July this year, my country's softwood lumber imports fell by 21% year-on-year to 9.2 million cubic meters, and the import value fell by 4% to 2.2 billion US dollars. In addition, affected by factors such as rising international oil prices, the average price of softwood lumber rose by 21% to US$243 per cubic meter.
On a single month basis, softwood imports continued to slow in July this year. It fell 34% year-on-year to 1.24 million cubic meters; the value of imports fell 32% to $297 million. The average cork price fell 4.6% from June to $240 per cubic metre, despite lower shipping costs in July, but was still a slight increase of 3% compared to the same period last year.
In terms of supply, the supply of cork in my country in July was mainly from Russia, which ranked first with a share of 81.4% of the total; Belarus, Canada and Finland followed closely with 4.1%, 2.5% and 2.4% respectively.
Inventory levels continue to decline
As of the last day of July, the total stock of softwood logs in major seaports in my country was 4.69 million cubic meters, a decrease of 14,600 cubic meters from the beginning of the month, and the inventory fell by about 3%. Among them, North American log and European spruce log stocks both showed significant declines.
Radiata pine logs from New Zealand and South America totaled 3.62 million cubic meters, accounting for nearly 73% of the total;
The total amount of Douglas fir and hemlock logs from North America was 553,000 cubic meters, accounting for nearly 11% of the total log inventory, a decrease of about 3% compared to the beginning of the month;
The total volume of European spruce logs is 486,000 cubic meters, accounting for nearly 10% of the total log inventory.
Overall, inventory levels maintained a downward trend in July, a trend that also extended into August. As of the beginning of this month, inventories in Shandong, Tianjin, Guangdong, Jiangsu and other places have all declined, and the overall inventory level has dropped by 17.6% compared with the same period last year.
The third quarter is usually a low season for wood consumption. On the one hand, affected by the hot weather from July to August, the construction industry has entered a traditional off-season, the market transaction volume is limited, and the construction site operating rate and wood consumption have dropped significantly. On the other hand, from July to August this year, there were many companies with power cuts and maintenance shutdowns, which also affected the overall market demand.
However, with the gradual slowdown of the high temperature weather in September, the operating rate of construction, papermaking and other industries has rebounded, and there is a certain room for incremental demand. It is expected that the downstream demand for wood will increase slightly. In Xiaolan's view, the pressure on domestic timber inventories has decreased, and the decline in spot prices may gradually slow down, which will also lay the foundation for a low price rebound in the rest of the next three quarters.