The economic downturn in European markets continued to affect sales of Finnish timber with purchases from private forests by the forest industry down 28% in March.
Volumes were 392,000m³ in March while purchases for the first quarter were 2.3 million m³, down 51% on the first three months of 2008.
Finnish Forest Industries called for more competitive pricing after warning that the average cost of wood raw material is higher in Finland than competing countries. Log prices fell 2-4% from February to March.
