New regulation deals a blow to timber mills

  • 2005-01-06
  • Baltic News Service
TALLINN - Due to a shortage of timber, major sawmills in Estonia fell short of their 2004 output targets but said they would try again this year.

AS Imavere Saeveski (Imavere Sawmill), the country's largest sawmill, came 5,000 cubic meters short of its planned 12-month output capacity of 380,000 cubic meters, the business daily Aripaev reported.

The next four sawmills in terms of size missed the target by 10 percent - 23 percent each.

This means that Estonia's five largest sawmills churned out some 100,000 cubic meters less during the year than they had planned, which in monetary terms translates into an estimated 200 million kroons (12.8 million euros) in sales.

All the major sawmills said they would try to meet the unfulfilled targets this year. However, since there is not enough local timber, the share of imported timber is set to grow. The major sawmills imported from 40 percent to 60 percent of the raw timber already in 2004.

"The sawmills handling small logs are having it most difficult," Aivar Pukk, manager of the Sauga sawmill of AS Stora Enso Timber, said. "At the same time, the capacities for processing small logs are best developed in Estonia," he told the newspaper.

The shortage became especially acute following new Environment Ministry regulations a year-and-a-half ago that set the minimum logging age of trees at 100 years for pine, 80 years for spruce and 70 years for birch.

"The older the tree, the thicker the log. And that's why we don't have enough small logs," Pukk explained.