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EU imports of plywood increased by 8% to 4.13 million cu.m in 2016, the second highest level ever recorded, although some way short of the peak of around 4.50 million cu.m in 2007.

Much of the gain in 2016 was due to a sharp increase in imports of birch plywood from Russia encouraged by extreme weakness of the Russian rouble against the euro and other EU currencies. In 2016, EU imports of Russian birch plywood increased 25% to 1.08 million cu.m, with most destined for Germany, the Baltic States, Poland, the UK and Netherlands.

EU imports of tropical hardwood plywood also increased last year. Imports of products manufactured in tropical countries increased 11% to 320,000 cu.m in 2016, while imports of products faced with tropical hardwood manufactured in China increased 25% to 120,000 cu.m.

In 2016, the share of tropical countries in total EU plywood imports recovered a little ground, rising to 7.8% after sliding to an all-time low of 7.5% in 2015.

However, Russian birch plywood achieved by far the largest increase in share of EU imports last year, rising from 22.4% in 2015 to 26.0% in 2016. This was largely at the expense of Chinese plywood faced with non-tropical hardwoods (including birch plywood, mixed light hardwood made with plantation grown poplar and eucalyptus, and various other forms of combi-plywood).

Between 2015 and 2016, EU imports of Chinese nontropical hardwood plywood fell 4% to 1.01 million cu.m and share of this commodity in total imports fell from 27.5% to 24.5%.

EU imports of softwood plywood increased by 2% to 1.33 million cu.m in 2016, with rising imports from Brazil (+5% to 890,000 cu.m), Chile (+2% to 220,000 cu.m) and Russia (+13% to 100,000 cu.m). These gains offset a 36% fall in EU imports of softwood plywood from China, to 70,000 cu.m.

The changing composition of EU plywood imports may be partly related to enforcement of EUTR and CE marking requirements which is encouraging a shift from Chinese mixed light hardwood products to plywood containing more clearly identified species of known origin and technical performance.

This factor tends to favour Russian birch plywood and Chinese plywood faced with hardwood species of known tropical origin, together with plywood imported directly from tropical countries.

During 2016, EU imports of tropical hardwood plywood increased 21% to 119,000 cu.m from Indonesia and 10% to 116,500 cu.m from Malaysia.

There was also a 13% increase in EU imports of this commodity from Brazil, although at 19,000 cu.m in 2016, trade with Brazil is less than one tenth of the level prevailing a decade ago. EU imports of tropical hardwood plywood from Gabon declined by 4% to 38,600 cu.m in 2016.