Wood chip raw material availability has grown tighter in Europe in the past couple of years and is expected to remain so in 2025, but its impact on the spot market has been limited by lower-than-typical overall demand in the period. A stronger consumption outlook by energy and other industrial segments at existing and new plants may put the market to test in 2025.
In the Nordics, wood chip supply availability was tight this year in the wake of a cut-off in Russian and Belarus supply following sanctions in 2022 and harvesting restrictions imposed by national and EU regulations.
A slowdown in sawmilling also contributed to a steady tightening of wood chip supply, particularly in Finland, who's imports rose year on year in 2024 as companies struggled with increased domestic wood chip prices as raw material prices held high.
Swedish hardwood chip imports over the first nine months of 2024 held considerably higher than long term averages but were lower when compared with a year prior (see chart). This was mainly owing to a year-on-year a drop in receipts from Uruguay, Germany and Portugal.
Swedish end-users struggled to meet demand from local sources that at most times were uncompetitive with chips from abroad. Swedish forest industry group Sodra, located in southern Sweden, raised the prices of its wood to historical highs earlier in the year and also expects 2025 to be a "challenging" year.
Wood chip supply in the Baltics also was tightened by a slowdown in sawmilling that weighed on sawmill residue supply and is not expected to improve in the near term. But forestry feedstock was available, and prices of fuel wood harvested in Estonia's state and private-owned forests edged down on the year in January-October, following record-high prices in 2022, data from Estonian state forestry agency RMK and private forestry centre Eramets show, although prices were still well above long-term averages (see graph).
This scarcity has yet to have a market impact as end-users still are well supplied with near capacity stocks. End-users delayed deliveries where they could or put deliveries into storage over October-November 2024.
Most northern European utilities switched on their wood chip-fired boilers later than usual as warmer weather pared heating demand.
Outages further pressured on the demand side, with Swedish utility Stockholm Exergi's 190MW Vartan 1 having undergone an outage of nearly six months that is scheduled to end on 27 January 2025.
Although consumption picked up from late November as temperatures dropped, the delay in wood chip burn for heat generation has left end-users with ample stocks.
But a structural lack of raw materials probably will tighten wood chip supply once consumption picks up in the first half of next year on forecast colder weather. Lower temperatures forecast over the next month should result in quicker stock withdrawals and encourage spot demand. For example, overnight temperatures in Oslo, Norway, are forecast to average minus 5.5°C, about 0.5°C below seasonal norms in the 45 days to 9 February, Speedwell Weather data show.
Elsewhere, in Poland, supply availability of biomass may tighten, if the draft regulation on requirements for domestic energy wood put forward by the government in July is approved. But it is likely that the restrictions will be softened in the final draft by the ministry, following public consultation in the preceding months, market sources said.
Looking forward, new projects across northwest Europe probably will support import demand.
While a 13-month outage that began on 12 December 2023 at Gazel Energie's 150MW wood chip-fired Provence 4 power plant weakened wood chip consumption this year, it is scheduled to resume operations on 5 January 2025. Gazel Energie reached a deal with the French government to supply power from the plant over the coming eight years, which may bolster imports. French hardwood imports more than halved in January-September this year compared with a year earlier.
Elsewhere, in Finland, energy company Joensuu Biocoal is set to begin commercial operations at the 60,000 t/yr heat-treated biomass production plant in the first quarter of next year. Paired with fresh demand from new projects planned for the first quarter of 2025, the deficit of supply seen in the woody feedstock market this year probably will continue into 2025, tightening wood chip availability once consumption picks up.
