Australia’s woodchip exports totalled 502,128 bone dry metric tonnes (bdmt) in January 2018. Source: Industry Edge
While hardwood chip exports continued to dominate, accounting for 402,485 bdmt for the month, there was a large lift in softwood chip exports, which were just short of 100,000 bdmt for the month.
In total, the January export result was 15% lower than in 2017, but month-on-month comparisons are not as useful as the year-on-year volume growth
This is because exports are transacted in large volumes, but on a relatively small number of vessels each month.
“It is common for a few ships to leave a day or two into a new month, and that can impact the monthly export volumes quite dramatically.” An IndustryEdge analyst said. “For example, record monthly exports in December 2017 saw seven vessels leave Australia from lunchtime on Christmas Day until New Years Eve. Our calculations show they held more than 177,000 bone dry tonnes of woodchips.”
For the year-ended January 2018, total recorded exports rose a modest 1.1% to 6.554 million bdmt.
“Total exports were actually higher over the year, but there was a period when softwood chip exports were not publicly reported due to the application of confidentiality restrictions.” IndustryEdge says.
Woodchip demand has been extremely strong over recent years, with global shipments continuing to grow. All of the market intelligence indicates Australian woodchip suppliers are fully committed for 2018. It seems little surprise that woodchip supply prices rose sharply in recent negotiations, with little expectation that mid-year hardwood negotiations will result in anything other than yet higher prices.
January saw 17 separate vessels depart Australia’s woodchip export facilities, with eight ports exporting for the month. Vessel tracking shows six vessels left Portland, with one of those also visiting Burnie, on its way to China.
“Portland has been the world’s busiest woodchip export facility the last two years. When the formal data for all global ports is available in a couple of months’ time, we expect that will be confirmed for 2017 also.” IndustryEdge commented.
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