New tensions on wood prices. For packaging, up to +18% in one year

Wood prices in Europe are rising again and, after years of great availability of raw material, a shortage of cut timber is beginning to appear, which is creating tensions on price lists, with increases of up to 15-18% on sawn fir between January 2025 and January 2026 and already noticeable repercussions on the downstream production sectors of the wood industry, starting with packaging - a strategic product for the logistics of every industrial sector - and panels, basic elements for furniture and building production.

The alarm bell comes from an analysis of FederlegnoArredo's Price Index, developed in collaboration with Fondazione Edison, which monitors monthly trends in the trade values of three product categories: sawn fir, glulam and OSB panels. Prices determined, in fact, by imports since, as is well known, 80% of the wood processed by Italian companies for their production comes from abroad, in particular from Germany, Austria and Slovenia.

Well, the German and Austrian forestry companies have drastically reduced their cuts and this is driving up the prices of waste (sawdust, wood chips, boards, etc.) and is also generating raw material shortages for panel and packaging manufacturers, as Paolo Fantoni, president of Assopannelli, explains.

"It is a dynamic that started about a year ago, but has accelerated in the last 4-5 months. It was no longer profitable for the forestry companies to cut, as prices had fallen sharply as a result of the ample availability of raw material due to two main facts: the dramatic passage of storm Vaia, which felled millions of trees in 2018, and the extraordinary cuts that had become necessary to fell trees attacked by the bark beetle in the following years."

In particular, the Index shows increases for softwood sawn timber, confirmed by Euwid data on the German market, where a rapid increase is observed starting in October (by about 15%), but then, going down to the productions further down the chain, noticeable increases were seen from October onwards for Osb panels and pellets, whose consumption is highly concentrated in the winter period, so producers can afford to pass on increases in production costs to the market. Lower increases were recorded in chipboard and Mdf, the types in which Italia excels.