Forestry worth almost £100m was listed for sale last year, in a market characterised by tight supply and buyer caution. That’s according to The UK Forest Market Report 2024, produced by BSW Group’s Tilhill Forestry and Goldcrest Land & Forestry Group, which argued that the market remains strong, driven by demand for quality assets, stable timber prices, wider natural capital projects and a positive medium-term outlook for wood being used as a substitute for high carbon materials. The report, launched in Edinburgh earlier this week, found that this year £95.4m of forestry was listed for sale in the UK – a 55% decrease on the previous year. The market numbered 44 properties, with a total of 5,400 stocked hectares and an average valuation of £18,600 per hectare. Scotland continued to dominate, with a 79% market share.
United States President-elect Donald Trump has gained the Senate, Electoral College, and popular votes. What does this mean for our forest industry? China is our largest purchaser of logs… In addition, exports of wood furniture from China have risen 24% in the first seven months of 2024 — great news; then along came the Don. The US accounts for 27% of the furniture exports out of China which totalled $20 billion in 2023. The current tariff for Chinese furniture into the US is 5.4%. Trump’s increased tariffs [between 32.8% and 54.3% on furniture] are predicted to result in a reduction in demand for Chinese manufactured product by between 73% and 87% respectively. If we assume the midpoint of 80%, this would result in a total demand reduction of around 350 million pieces of furniture… New Zealand radiata is a favoured product for the Chinese furniture industry… Therefore, any reduction in demand for Chinese furniture products is going to directly impact on us.
BRUSSELS – The European Parliament sought on Thursday to water down a ban on the import of commodities such as beef and soy linked to deforestation, and backed a one year delay to the new rule, in a fresh push-back against the EU’s environmental agenda. The European Commission proposed a 12-month delay until December 2025 last month after complaints from a group of 20 EU countries, some companies and non-EU countries such as Brazil, Indonesia and the United States. However, it did not propose any changes to the substance of the law. …The parliament’s narrow vote to add a new ‘no risk’ category of countries with far lighter controls adds to uncertainty over the regulation as lawmakers will have to enter negotiations with EU governments. …Environmental groups said the vote was a terrible signal. Julia Christian at Fern, said the amendment would give EU forested countries a free pass and was “particularly egregious”.
Non-profit organisation Two Sides is calling on organisations to remove or change misleading statements that it labels as ‘greenwashing’. …According to the organisation, economic pressures have caused companies which have previously relied on paper for customer communication to shift from traditional paper-based services to digital platforms, in order to cut costs. Alongside this transition, many companies have made environmental marketing claims such as “Go Green – Go Paperless” or “Choose e-billing and help save a tree.” But according to Two Sides, these claims are misleading, and are clear examples of greenwashing. …Two Sides has challenged over 2,800 organisations communicating these greenwashing messages to their customers, resulting in more than 1,260 changing or removing statements. …“Far from ‘saving trees,’ a healthy market for forest products and paper encourages the long-term growth of forests through sustainable forest management.”
Registration is open and delegates from around the world are invited to Brisbane, Australia to attend the 2025 World Conference on Timber Engineering, June 22 – 26. WCTE is the world’s premier scientific dissemination forum for presenting and discussing the latest technical and architectural developments and innovations in timber engineering and construction. The scope covers research, education, and practice topics from all over the world. There is a rise in engineering and architectural firms, developers and investors, now emphasizing timber engineering as a preferred solution for many projects, providing further relevance and importance to the research carried out by the timber design and construction community. A number of exemplar buildings and structures are located within Brisbane, providing an ideal opportunity for site visits as part of WCTE 2025; whilst some stunning examples of modern timber buildings can also be seen in Sydney, Melbourne and Perth.
Member states close the door to further tweaks to the new deforestation rules pushed by unusual right-wing majority in the European Parliament. EU diplomats have rejected European Parliament amendments to the Commission’s proposal to push back the entry into force of the bloc’s new deforestation rules by one year. Instead, member states insist on adhering to the original text. …Among the amendments, MEPs sought to introduce a new classification for countries posing “no risk” of deforestation, alongside the existing categories of low, standard, and high risk. However, in a meeting of EU ambassadors, member states reaffirmed they want to stick to the original proposal. “Opening the text would only generate legal uncertainty and huge time constraints,” the source continued. An interinstitutional meeting between MEPs and EU countries to hash out the divergences might take place as soon as tomorrow.
Forests are being cut and degraded at an alarming rate, especially in the tropics, with the expansion of agricultural land causing almost 90% of forest reduction, according to a study by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. A first-of-its-kind law called the EU Deforestation Regulation (EUDR), was designed to take steps to counter this. …The legislation was heralded by proponents as a breakthrough in the global battle against forest loss, it came into force in June 2023 and was due to be implemented at the end of this year. But since it was passed, several agriculture ministries — including those of Austria, the Czech Republic, Finland, Italy, Poland, Slovakia, Slovenia and Sweden — have called for implementation to be postponed. …in 2023, the world lost some 37,000 square kilometers of tropical forest… A 12-month delay would mean additional global forest loss of about 2,300 square kilometers, according to EU studies.
More than a year and a half after coming to power on a promise to create a Great Koala National Park in the state’s north, new analysis suggests the NSW government’s own logging arm is trashing the forest inside the proposed park. It comes as the Minns government is quietly progressing a proposal to the federal government to earn carbon credits from its forests that could pave the way to end native forest logging across the state. …Logging inside the Great Koala National Park assessment area is four times more intense when measured by area than in nearby state forests outside the park, and environmentalists say the targeted areas are wreaking maximal environmental damage. …Debus, the state’s longest-serving environment minister and now chair of Wilderness Australia, said there was clear evidence that the state forestry corporation was “seriously attacking the ecological integrity” of the proposed national park.
OTTAWA — Minister of Agriculture and Forestry Sari Essayah visits Canada with a delegation of the Finnish forestry and bioeconomy actors on 24–28 November. Minister Essayah will deliver the keynote speech at the Scaling Up Bioeconomy Conference. In addition, the Minister and the business delegation will visit the province of Quebec. …In Ottawa, Minister Essayah will meet with federal ministers of Canada, members of the Standing Committee on Natural Resources of the Parliament of Canada and management of the Natural Resources Canada (NRC). The main topics are the outlook of and cooperation in bioeconomy, sustainable forestry and forest management. …In the province of Quebec, Minister Essayah will meet the province’s management to discuss the opportunities in the bioeconomy sector. Finnish expertise in forest and bioeconomy will be showcased at Quebec Forest Industries Association and the local companies.
Japan’s Enshu Forest Energy started commercial operations at its 7.1MW biomass-fired power plant in Fukuroi city of Shizuoka prefecture on 16 November. The Enshu plant will burn 90,000t/yr of wood chips made from unused forest materials and gathered mainly from Shizuoka prefecture. It can generate around 53GWh/yr of electricity, which will be sold under the country’s feed-in tariff (FiT) scheme for 20 years. The plant was initially scheduled to come on line in December, but started two weeks earlier as Enshu Forest Energy, the operating company, completed its safety check and test runs earlier than expected.
The battle to keep global warming within 1.5 degrees Celsius has been a rallying cry for climate action for nearly a decade. Now, with the planet almost certain to blow past the target, diplomats and campaigners at the COP29 summit have found themselves awkwardly clinging to a goal that no longer makes sense. The evidence has become harder and harder to ignore. This year will once again be the hottest on record as greenhouse gas emissions continue to soar and Earth will likely register an average reading of 1.5C above pre-industrial levels for the first time. A study released this month using a new technique for measuring the rise in temperatures suggests the world was 
Is it possible to heat the planet to dangerous levels and then cool it down later? Economic models charting the world’s path to net zero emissions say yes. However, this bet on future large-scale carbon removal risks becoming a “get out of jail free” clause that allows high emissions to continue inflaming the climate crisis. A new study by leading scientists has criticised the overconfidence of policymakers and climate modellers – even the authors of the 2015 Paris agreement – for making this gamble. Their research highlights the pitfalls of assuming temperature thresholds can be safely exceeded and then reinstated. They’re right – and the problem runs even deeper. The challenge of implementing carbon removal at the scale required isn’t simply a matter of the technology being available and cost effective to deploy. Large-scale CO₂ removal depends on there being vast amounts of land to store carbon in trees and soil.
