Sales of locally produced sawn softwood products continued their downwards trend year-ended January, with total sales 7.6% lower at 2.883 million m3. Traditionally the quietest month of the year, sales for the month of January totalled just 161,686 m3 down 17.2% on January 2021.
So low were sales in January, they were the lowest in nine years – since January 2013, as the first chart shows.
To go straight to the dashboard and take a closer look at the data, click here.
Although the January figure is surprisingly low, we are reminded of the Shakespearean aphorism that ‘one swallow does not a summer make’. In the same vein, one month does not describe some new, sharply lower trend.
Indeed, the observant will have noticed that sales in December 2021 (222,730 m3) were around 14,000 m3 higher than in December of 2020. Another aphorism we could deploy here is that this may be no more than the swings and roundabouts of tense and disrupted markets!
Among the grades – where growth has been observed for only limited grades – the net stand out is probably the Outdoor Domestic grade, which has seen sales lifted 3.6% to 303,506 m3 year-ended January.
We say ‘net’ here, because the solid 7.8% growth in Treated Structural <120mm (to 713,060 m3) over the same period has come largely at the expense of the Untreated Structural <120 mm grade, sales of which were down 16.6% (to 616,629 m3) as the chart here shows.
To go straight to the dashboard and take a closer look at the data, click here.
It is also interesting to note with the tightening of log supply some movement of production from lower value grades to higher value grades. If we regard Outdoor Domestic and Structural as higher value grades and Packaging, Ungraded and Export as lower value grades there has been a small movement in the percentage of overall sales between these groupings.
The data appears to suggest that in a tight sales environment, where log availability is very challenging, producers are finding the means by which they can maximise value, by shifting production to structural and major outdoor grades.
As much as the decline in total sales is of interest, the greater interest might well be the changing balances of what is being produced and sold.
