On an annualised basis, for the year-ended February 2017, sales of domestically produced sawn softwood declined to 3,131,207 m3, down just 0.1% on the prior month’s year-end total.
This is the first time since October 2015 that annualised sales have dipped, albeit that total sales are 15.0% higher than for the year-ended February 2016. The dip may prove to be nothing more than a moment in time, but there are indications that the industry is at or near its peak production capacity.
As the chart below demonstrates, annualized sales have grown strongly through the last year and longer, hitting their peak of 3,134,455 m3 in January 2017.
To go straight to the dashboard and take a closer look at the data, click here.
Assuming that the practical peak production capacity of the domestic industry is something in the vicinity of 3,200,000 m3 per annum, movements of up to 2% or 3% above and below a prior month’s year-end sales are easily accounted for.
This data for instance, makes no reference to inventories and data measured in February 2017 has a 28 day month, while in 2016, there was a Leap Year and a 29 day month.
Looking a little more deeply, we can observe that sales in February 2017 totaled 263,860 m3, down 1.2% on the prior February. On the same basis as the annualized data, this is well within the range of acceptable variance.
As other items in this edition of Statistics Count demonstrate, markets are changing and there is a comparative softness to some of the demand-side and housing data, compared with a year ago. Whether that is flowing through into a sustained period of decline in sawn softwood sales is currently uncertain. After the heady times of the recent past, it would not come as a surprise if the market was softer through the next period.
