Thursday 21 March 2024. – The construction-related wood panels, OSB and softwood plywood, have experienced poor demand for over a year. However, upon examining trade statistics from every continent, we observe that monthly shipping volumes have ceased declining and stabilized. In some cases, volumes are…

Tuesday 23 January 2024. – Three years ago, in March 2021, the container vessel Ever Given got stuck in the Suez Canal. The traffic was blocked for six days, and the main material vein from Asia to Europe was disturbed for several months. Now, the…

Wednesday 20 December 2023. – For laziness reasons, I copied today my blog post from January this year. However, I had to make some edits to my 11-month-old prediction. Deletions in strikethrough, additions in bold: — Here’s a simplified plywood market outlook in January 2023:…

Tuesday 7 November 2023. – In business, people who sell products deal with customers all the time. But when you work behind the scenes in a factory, you might wonder why you should care about the customers who buy the things your company makes. Here’s…

Friday 29 September 2023. – The plywood market today is gloomy. While business hasn’t collapsed entirely, volumes have dipped far below what we were accustomed to not so long ago. Even birch plywood faces the challenge of declining demand. Fortunately, there are pockets of resilience…

Thursday 22 June 2023. – A few decades ago, I found myself crawling under a conveyor belt in the late Kuopio plywood mill in Finland. My task was to dig out a pile of wet, oily, and smelly wood dust. It was during the mill’s…

Friday 2 June 2023. – According to Yale School of Management’s list, over 1,000 companies have curtailed operations in Russia by May 2023. While the list is mainly occupied by Western companies, very few Chinese companies have stopped operations in Russia. Chinese companies don’t bear…