Despite being an industrialised country Germany has extensive, high-yielding forests. In fact timber stock has risen to 3.7 billion m3, despite extensive use of the resource. The country’s forests cover a third of its total land area, with softwood dominating the distribution of tree species, led by spruce/ fi r, then pine, but with Douglas fi r woodland on the rise. The dominant hardwood species is beech, followed by oak.

The German sawmill industry produces more than 21 million m3 of softwood and 1 million m3 of hardwood lumber in over 2,000 sawmills, with nearly 25,000 employees and an annual turnover of €7bn.

The entire forestry and wood cluster comprises 125,400 companies, with more than 1 million employees and turnover of €178bn. That puts it ahead of the German automotive industry in terms of GDP ranking.

The sawmill sector is also very broadly structured, with over 70% of companies employing fewer than 10 people, but with the 110 companies with a workforce of 50 or more generating 74% of the sector’s turnover. Construction is the sawmill sector’s primary customer, buying a wide range of sawn timber products and accounting for more than 60% of total mill production. The packaging industry is also a signifi cant German timber user, including for crates, pallets and export packaging products.

ROBUST MACROECONOMICS

Germany’s timber sector is also underpinned by the country’s generally positive economic development, with key forecasts predicting GDP growth of 1.8% for 2017 and the same in 2018.

Persistently positive overall economic development and the current high level of ongoing residential construction have created robust domestic demand for timber through 2017. In fact, the sawmill sector anticipates an increase in sawn softwood output to 22 million m3 and to 1.08 million m3 in hardwood lumber.

In recent years, the German sawmill industry has also taken advantage of its high availability of raw materials to expand production capacity rapidly. Today it is the second largest producer of softwood lumber in Europe after Russia (with the latter’s output including the volumes from its non-European territories).

With the expansion of sawn production, German timber businesses have also increased exports over recent years. The country fi rst became a net exporter of softwood in 2004 and since then has further expanded overseas sales, now ranking as Europe’s fourth largest sawn softwood exporter after Russia, Sweden and Finland and fi fth biggest worldwide.

More recently, adverse exchange rates, notably of the euro against the US dollar have weighed on export business outside the Eurozone and today they continue to put pressure on the softwood sector’s 20% of exports which are destined for customers elsewhere. The exception, of course, has been the UK market, where the euro/pound exchange rate has given German sawmillers the advantage over the last couple of years.

EXPORTS TO UK INCREASE

The UK is in fact Germany’s sixth biggest export market. In 2015 its total purchases of German coniferous sawnwood were 529,000m3, accounting for 10% of all UK softwood imports and also making it the latter’s sixth biggest overseas supplier after Russia, Sweden, Canada, Latvia and Finland. In 2016 the UK’s total (provisional) annual German sawn softwood imports amounted to 212,000m3 and in the first eight months of 2017 the volume was 156,000 m3 – an increase of 6.4% compared to the same period a year ago.

German sawmillers describe the UK today as an interesting, but challenging market. But, with their geographical proximity and by maintaining product quality and delivery reliability, they remain confident of their firm place in the market.

ENGINEERED TIMBER

Engineered timber production has also formed a burgeoning part of the German timber sector for a number of years. Glulam manufacture leads the way, with output of 1.12 million m3 in 2016.

All manufacturers offer the material in spruce/fir and 61% also feature larch in their product range, with around a third using processed pine too. Douglas fir and other types of wood account for 20% and 10% of output respectively. German producers have also responded to the growing international market for cross-laminated timber (CLT) and developed production accordingly.

The UK is regarded as a market with particular potential, given its reliance on CLT imports. The growing awareness among the UK’s architects of the material’s potential and their increasingly ambitious use of it in large scale and particularly multi-storey urban projects, where it provides quick-build, prefabricated construction solutions, is giving it an increasing market edge.

German sawmillers have also, of course, diversified into other engineered products, including LVL and solid timber construction solutions

The German engineered wood and wider timber sector also backs its widely acknowledged technical capabilities with a long tradition of managing its forests sustainably, dating way back beyond the creation of the FSC and PEFC and the introduction of the EU Timber Regulation.

In fact, it is claimed, the principle of sustainable forestry was first introduced in the country 300 years ago to combat overexploitation of timber to fuel metal and glass works.

It is now enshrined in forest legislation at the federal and state level.

The website www.german-wood.com includes a database of export sawmills, where suppliers can be selected according to wood species and product range.