After the end of Russian timber imports, Finnish forestry will mainly look for alternative timber from domestic regions. This spring, Finnish Forest Corporation added a purchasing organization.
Even with the increase in Finnish wood purchases, there are still challenges in terms of harvesting and transportation - wood imports from Russia (mainly pulpwood and wood chips) are basically harvested and transported to Finland by Russian workers using Russian equipment, but does Finland currently have Enough equipment and drivers to replace Russian workers is unclear.
According to Finnish machinery entrepreneurs, much depends on how much more wood is to be harvested. There will be hardly any problems this year, as the spring strikes have reduced wood consumption and some wood was imported from Russia at the beginning of the year.
“If we are talking about millions of cubic meters of extra harvest, this is not a problem,” said Simo Jaakkola, executive vice president of Finnish Machinery Entrepreneur.
However, the situation will be more challenging if the amount of wood imported from Russia last year (just over 9 million cubic meters) is replaced next year.
"Although there is enough equipment, the next question is whether there will be enough staff to work," Jaakkola said.
However, not all wood that replaces Russian imports will be sourced domestically. It is also important to note that the amount of industrial wood felled in Finland has varied considerably in recent years, even surpassing the amount imported from Russia - 2012-2021, production was 52-64 million cubic meters. Therefore, there are still many challenges to replace Russian wood with domestic wood resources.