Energy taxes and environmental charges are having a detrimental affect on the Swedish wood market according to Sven Wird, senior vice-president of group technology at Holmen AB.
In the group’s employee magazine Mr Wird said heating plants that use untaxed wood fibre instead of heavily taxed oil to generate energy could pay much more than the pulp and paper industry for wood and, in some cases, more than sawmills pay for saw timber.
This, said Mr Wird, amounted to a squandering of resources as one cubic metre of wood used for energy production reduces the need to import oil by about SKr250.
He maintained that if this wood were used instead in the pulp and paper industry it would increase export revenues 10-fold.
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“The use of biofuel must be limited to branches and tree tops, peat and waste. It is time politicians stopped cutting the ground from under the industry on which the Swedish economy and society depend |
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Sven Wird, senior vice-president, Holmen |
Mr Wird said unreasonable taxes and charges would jeopardise the forest products industry’s supplies of raw material and put thousands of jobs at risk.
And while agreeing that climate targets were important, he warned these must not be met at the expense of Sweden’s most important staple industry. “The use of biofuel must be lilmited to branches and tree tops, peat and waste. It is high time our politicians realised this and immediately stopped cutting the ground from under the branch of industry on which the Swedish economy and the whole of society are dependent,” he said.
