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Global trade of wood chips has seen spectacular development the past 15 years with a steady increase of about four percent annually ( volumes year-over-year were up 11 of the past 14 years ), according to the Wood Resource Quarterly ( WRQ ).
In 2016 , an estimated 35.6 million tons were shipped , predominantly to pulp mills in China and Japan , which can be compared to only 21 million tons 15 years ago . While trade of hardwood chips reached a record high in 2016 , shipments of softwood chips have levelled out the past few years with 2016 volumes being slightly lower than the ten-year
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average .
Japan and China are by far the two dominant consumers of globally traded wood chips . Their dominance is particularly accentuated for hardwood chips , where they imported 84 percent of the world ’ s total imports in 2016 , up from 75 percent in 2007 . China has surpassed Japan as the largest importer of chips in the world , and with expansion of pulp capacity on the horizon in China , it is likely that the country will be the number one destination for wood chips for many years to come .
The major sources of hardwood chips for the two dominant importers include ( in ranking order
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in the 4Q / 16 ); Vietnam , Australia , Chile and South Africa . The biggest change on the supply side the past three years has been the sharp increases in hardwood chip shipments from Australia , South Africa , Brazil and Chile , while exports have fallen from Indonesia , Uruguay and Thailand .
About 30 % of global chip trade occurs outside of the Pacific Rim with Finland , Sweden and Turkey being the major destinations . The Finnish forest industry has long been reliant on both logs and wood chips from neighbouring Russia and the Baltic States . In 2016 , Finland imported almost 1.7 million tons of chips to its
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country ’ s pulp industry , of which a majority was softwood chips from Russia . Current import volumes are down about 25 % from five years ago , partly because of increased availability of domestic chips and higher usage of pulplogs . |