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Blog
March 21, 2024 / April 25, 2025 by Panu Anttila
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 slightly improving, particularly with OSB. Simultaneously, central banks have halted […]
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January 23, 2024 / April 25, 2025 by Panu Anttila
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 same route is crippled again. Since mid-December 2023, Houthi rebels […]
December 20, 2023 / April 25, 2025 by Panu Anttila
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: Birch plywood availability will remain scarce until mid-2023. A minor […]
November 7, 2023 / April 25, 2025 by Panu Anttila
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 the thing: even if you work far away from customers, […]
September 29, 2023 / April 25, 2025 by Panu Anttila
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 within the market, but overall, we find ourselves navigating the […]
June 2, 2023 / April 25, 2025 by Panu Anttila
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 the same reputational risk as companies in the West. Last […]
May 5, 2023 / July 9, 2024 by Panu Anttila
Friday 5 May 2023. – Labour Day is a common public holiday across the world. Some celebrate on May 1st and some in September. It is a carnival, but originally it was a day to celebrate workers’ achievements. There are still some speeches, marching, and red flags in the streets, but it feels like looking […]
April 19, 2023 / July 9, 2024 by Panu Anttila
Tuesday 19 April 2023. – If you buy drugs, you probably understand that it’s illegal and it’s imported. A buyer doesn’t spend time wondering which laboratory the powder is coming from. On the street corners, cash and merchandise are exchanged, but not certificates of origin. If you buy plywood, it is often imported but rarely […]
March 27, 2023 / July 9, 2024 by Panu Anttila
Monday 27 March 2023. – Plywood production films from the 50s and 60s present huge logs. Human arms are too short to get around the trunks. Logs are peeled to kilometer-long veneer carpets. I bet the log size and availability go hand in hand. In the old days the wood usage was less, and the needed […]
March 13, 2023 / July 9, 2024 by Panu Anttila
Monday 13 March 2023. – I was last week in Dubai Woodshow for the first time. I was positively surprised. The fair was an active one. The hallways were full of professional people with a mission to meet other suppliers and purchasers. Many were prepared with agreed appointments and meetings. The emphasis at the show […]
February 24, 2023 / March 13, 2023 by Panu Anttila
Friday 24 February 2023. – A year ago Russian troops crossed the Ukrainian border. In addition to being absurd and pointless, the war today is stuck. The demand is high for the Russian ammunition industry, but not for the plywood industry. According to Rosstat, in the last quarter before the war, Q4 2021, Russian plywood […]
February 10, 2023 / February 10, 2023 by Panu Anttila
Friday 10 February 2023. – Lately, there has been a lot of fuss around artificial intelligence and the ChatGPT application. The company behind, OpenAI, has started a race where the search engine giants are followers. Once again, somebody coming from the outskirts of the industry is disrupting the market. That’s refreshing. I have my head […]
January 30, 2023 / January 30, 2023 by Panu Anttila
Monday 30 January 2023. – In the 18th century, the Spinning Jenny started the industrial revolution. Compared to manual work, one worker could produce eight times more cotton fabric with this remarkable invention. At the beginning of the 20th century, plywood mills started to pop up like mushrooms in Europe and North America. The plywood […]
January 16, 2023 / January 16, 2023 by Panu Anttila
Monday 16 January 2023. – Oddly enough, predicting the 2023 plywood business landscape 2023 seems easy. The overall market sentiment is unanimous. Interest rates and inflation are high. Activity slows down. Since the pandemic started in early 2020, the wood panel market has faced surprises one after another. Even if we’d see a steady decline […]
December 19, 2022 / December 19, 2022 by Panu Anttila
Monday 19 December 2022. – When I was a kid my family had a cat called Moro. He was talented at sleeping. He slept most of the day with apparently zero worries in his head. But when Moro was out chasing mice, he was extremely focused and quick. Like a real lion. 2022 has been […]
December 5, 2022 / December 5, 2022 by Panu Anttila
Monday 5 December 2022. – On Tuesday 6 December Finland celebrates its 105th independence day. The day has always been important for us Finns. We treasure our grandparents’ perseverance in keeping us independent. The current generations have had it easier. There have been decades of equality and political stability, as well as economic growth. Is […]
November 18, 2022 / November 18, 2022 by Panu Anttila
Friday 18 November 2022. – Last Tuesday earth’s population reached 8 billion. The plywood industry is not directly related to birthrate or mortality, but I started to wonder how much plywood 8 billion people consume. Is plywood consumption increasing or decreasing on a global scale? How big is my stake in total consumption? If each one […]
November 4, 2022 / November 7, 2022 by Panu Anttila
Monday 7 November 2022. – In the late pandemic era, many plywood contract discussions are done over a video call, but luckily some negotiations take place face to face. This old-school approach is appreciated particularly when companies share a long history together. The larger the deal is in volume and value, the harder the discussions […]
October 21, 2022 / October 25, 2022 by Panu Anttila
Friday 21 October 2022. – This week British prime minister Liz Truss resigned after six weeks of service. That’s quick. The trust in Truss was lost. Fortunately, the company CEOs usually last longer than six weeks. According to consulting company Korn Ferry’s analysis, the average CEO tenure in 2019 was 6.9 years. Usually, the career […]
October 7, 2022 / October 7, 2022 by Panu Anttila
Friday 7 October 2022. – I have never visited Cuba, but when the country is mentioned, my mind gets full of images of the streets of Havana with old buildings and classic American cars. Why cars? I cannot imagine any other country that brings car photos into my mind. The United States embargo against Cuba […]
September 23, 2022 / September 23, 2022 by Panu Anttila
Friday 23 September 2022. – The US housing starts jumped unexpectedly by 12.2% in August 2022 compared to July. However, the starts had dropped in July which partly explains the August recovery. The longer-term indicator, housing permits, lowered by 10% in August according to the US Commerce Department data. The annual rate in August, 1.52 […]
September 9, 2022 / September 9, 2022 by Panu Anttila
Friday 9 September 2022. – Inflation means that things get more expensive, right? And high inflation means that things get quickly more expensive? The consumer price inflation in the USA and in the Eurozone has exceeded 8% in recent months (year-on-year). That is high compared to what we’ve been used to. According to the World […]
August 26, 2022 / August 26, 2022 by Panu Anttila
Friday 26 August 2022. – Plywood selling in an overdemand situation is not really selling if selling is understood as finding new customers. In strong demand, there is more use for hiding skills than selling skills. Salespersons spend their time by arranging and splitting volumes in order to keep the current customers at least somewhat […]
August 15, 2022 / July 9, 2024 by Panu Anttila
August 12, 2022. – Traditionally plywood mills have been built on domestic log supply. There has been plenty of forest around, and the procurement area has been defined as a distance radius around the mill. Some mills still enjoy this luxury, but for some things have started to change. Log supply used to be easy […]
