NEW RAW MATERIAL TRAP: Strengthening the wood industry and new ways of applying wood lead to a ‘wood crisis’

Will we soon have a ‘wood crisis’, according to the logic of the current gas crisis? There is never enough wood, and large investments are planned. For instance, Bjelin is building the world’s largest wooden floor factory in Ogulin, a new ambitious parquet group is being created, and there are sawmills and furniture manufacturers. Almost everyone is affected by the halted import of wood from Russia and Ukraine, and the daily lament of parts of the wood industry about the insufficient quantities of wood available for purchase from Croatian forests is already notorious.

So when Igor Fazekaš, a member of the Management Board of Croatian Forests, says that they will most likely have to ‘adjust the price’ of wood assortments and that a reduction in the volume of wood planned for logging is expected, it must cause discomfort among the nearly 150 participants of the Wood Technology Conference. Thus, there will be less wood, but it will be more expensive.

As explained by Zdenko Bogović, president of the Croatian Association of Private Forest Owners, this is about an approach to management promoted within the ‘Natura 2000’ network, which would encompass 139,500 hectares of forests that cannot be used for raw material.

– This is a tremendous pressure and shock for all of us. On one hand, we are happy because we will receive compensation for it, but it will create significant problems for the wood industry – he emphasized.

And Diego Benedetti from the European Sawmill Association stated that the demand for wood products is excellent, but that there is a supply problem and added that wood is becoming an increasingly common choice across Europe. This trend is already quite visible in Croatia. Business results show that last year all manufacturers of cardboard packaging and paper bags 'exploded'.

Even one of the largest domestic plastic manufacturers, Muraplast, entered the paper segment back in 2015, which today already constitutes a third of their production. In Kotoriba, they explain that the 'ban' on plastic bags is not just an ecological move; they say it was also controversial because the paper bag is a completely European product – from wood, paper, and even machines, to the final product, unlike plastic bags based on oil. They claim that Europe has enough wood, but the problem lies in the insufficient capacities for paper production.

And that’s not all: wood is becoming an increasingly common substitute material in construction. The thermal insulation manufacturer Fragmat H from Sveti Križ Začretje expects a lot from the new wood-based program (wood wool) instead of styrofoam. And the large container manufacturer, Jedinstvo Krapina, is increasingly turning to the production of modules based on wooden structures, which are not only 'greener' but also cheaper than metal ones.

Only in Banija, three thousand wooden structures will be built, so the owner of Jedinstvo Josip Mihalić, who has been in the metal industry for thirty years, today says: – The future is in wood! An experienced metalworker should be trusted. The only question is whether there will be enough wood – and at what price.