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NZ forestry faces winter challenges amid stable log prices - Marcus Musson
Mar 15, 2025
Maybe it’s because I especially dislike winter.
All the firewood you diligently cut, split and stacked disappears, trucks start getting stuck, road maintenance costs climb and the export market generally tanks – you can pretty much set your watch by it.
It would be good to be like the Americans and park the logging gear up during the wet season, go play ice hockey and drink whiskey.
Unfortunately, our system isn’t set up like that and the finance companies and staff wouldn’t see the humour in not getting paid for four months of the year.
Having said that, summer has been very forest-owner-friendly in terms of both weather and prices.
We have seen some reasonably consistent price increases for the past six months and A grade has now maintained its magical $130/m3 level for the past couple of months.
Considering the uncertainty the globe is facing at present, we’re doing better than was generally expected.
Probably not the time to go trotting off to the travel agent yet though as we enter the snipers’ alley of export price corrections.
Other than 2021, the past six years have seen falls of between $20 and $30/JAS between April and July as the post-Chinese New Year (CNY) hangover sets in good and proper.
The 64-million-dollar question is will 2025 be different?
Post CNY the on-port inventory is sitting slightly over 4 million m3 and uplift has increased to between 60 and 65,000 m3 per day which is solid; FOREX is playing the game at US$0.57 and shipping is in the high US$20’s to early US$30’s.
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