Germany exported a total of 2.210m m³ of softwood logs in the first three months of this year, roughly 12% more than a year earlier. According to provisional data from Destatis, the federal statistics office, roughly 1.848m m³ of this was accounted for by softwood sawlogs and 362,136 m³ by industrial softwood.
As in the preceding quarters, China was the biggest recipient in terms of volume. Here, the deliveries amounted to 936,659 m³ of sawlogs (+24%) and 27,508 m³ of industrial wood (-47%). As such, the partly three-figure growth rates like those seen in the preceding quarters were not repeated at the beginning of this year but the German export figures and the Chinese import statistics differ greatly from one another.
Within Europe, in keeping with tradition, Austria remained the biggest recipient country. Here, the volume of delivered sawlogs was 13% up at 456,281 m³ and exports of industrial roundwood increased 29% to 95,271 m³. The second biggest recipient was Poland, to where Germany exported 124,780 m³ of sawlogs and 230,888 m³ of industrial roundwood. The value of the sawlog exports totalled €130.4m, equating to an average of around €71/m³. The value of the industrial-roundwood exports amounted to €14.2m, which equates to an arithmetical average price of roughly €39/m³.
