Federal Forests do not end this year with the feared minus, but with a positive result.
Forestry is still exposed to market dislocations in the corona crisis. The reason for this is global warming, which is causing huge amounts of damaged wood throughout Central Europe and thus influencing the Austrian market. This year, more wood will be imported into Austria than ever before. According to Bundesforste board members Rudolf Freidhager and Georg Schöppl, the record amount of 2019 will be clearly exceeded. But there are bright spots, they emphasize.
Last year the Central European timber market practically came to a standstill. Damaged wood from Germany and the Czech Republic in particular was also sold to Austria at absolutely bargain prices. In this country, 80 percent of the federal forest wood harvest was damaged wood. Then this year, at the beginning of the year, the corona crisis came along, which caused an alarm mood.
But: “Amazingly, the sawing industry was relatively stable all year round”, said the forestry director of the Austrian Federal Forests (ÖBf), Rudolf Freidhager. There was only a small kink at the beginning of the first lockdown. The wood prices remained extremely low, but the demand is enormous. “The saw-timber market has developed tremendously well, it is really buzzing.” In the past eight weeks or so, the ÖBf has increased the daily delivery quantities from 5,000 to 6,000 solid cubic meters of wood to 10,000 to 11,000. In May, only around 4,000 solid cubic meters were delivered per day.
In the paper industry there was “just a bit of a slump in some grades”. The industrial timber market is going “badly”, according to Freidhager. “There is simply too much on the market.” Enormous quantities of poor quality wood would also come from the Czech Republic and Germany. The wood is just enough for chemical decomposition, albeit no longer for the saw.
“This year more wood will be imported to Austria than ever before,” said the manager. “An increase of up to 18 percent compared to the previous year is expected.” In 2019 7.1 million cubic meters of coniferous logs were imported, in 2018 it was 7.2 million cubic meters.
In November, the ÖBf achieved the strongest deliveries this year with 180,000 solid cubic meters. “Less was imported and the customers needed the wood,” said CFO Schöppl. Most recently, a total of 1.54 million cubic meters were delivered in the year. It was very important to be able to increase the delivery volume so quickly.
For the state-owned company ÖBf, the financial year went much better than feared. A relatively humid year without heat waves also helped, which reduced the proportion of damaged wood in Central Europe, explained the board members in an interview with the APA.
“In May we announced in a supervisory board meeting that there will probably be a loss this year for the first time,” said CFO Schöppl. “Thank God this assessment was too pessimistic. This year we will probably exceed the EBT (pre-tax result, note) from 2019, which amounted to 13.4 million euros – although the wood price was around 3 euros compared to the previous year to 56.50 euros per cubic meter has decreased. ” The further decline in the price of wood therefore costs around 20 percent of the pre-tax result. This is cushioned, among other things, with a vacation reduction program with an earnings effect of a good 2 million euros.
In the outlook for 2021, Schöppl and Freidhager expect that the “double mill” from climate change with the associated high quantities of damaged wood and high price pressure will be preserved, as will the effects of the corona crisis.
