Tree Frog News sat down with global wood markets analyst Russ Taylor to discuss his upcoming GLOBAL WOOD SUMMIT conference in Vancouver, October 28-30.

Having covered many of your wood market conferences in the past, we know how well they’re valued by attendees. But it’s been a few years. Why resurrect this global conference now?

Simply put, there was a void in the conference market for bringing buyers, sellers, producers, traders, and service providers together to discuss international developments in markets and in forest products dynamics. There is also a general market malaise, post-covid—particularly in lumber, panel, and log markets, and too many private forecasts of ‘better-days-ahead’ that end up so different from reality.

This means that the need for up-to-date, detailed insights and discussions on global developments in pulp, paper, logs, lumber and panels has never been so important. The objective of the GLOBAL WOOD SUMMIT is to feature a wide range of industry experts, producers, exporters, importers and selected specialists focused on what is next for national and global trade in 2025.

So, with urging from several of my colleagues and clients, I decided to resurrect the kind of engaging, unique event I hosted in the past. Too many conferences simply repeat versions of previous ones, often using many of the same speakers, or they tend to be unfocused and have little excitement.

What’s new with this Global Wood Summit conference and what will differentiate it from your previous ones?

For the most part, the Summit will be like my previous Vancouver conferences—under the Wood Markets banner—with one major difference. I was able to secure a conference partnership with Kevin Mason and his expert industry/market research team at ERA Forest Products Research. This will allow the joint conference team to broaden the speaker and topic offerings; professionally, experience-wise and by product type and geography.

With the ERA team as a partner, we can now go into more depth in terms of product lines, geographic regions and speakers, making the summit a marquee event for the global trade. Combined, our two companies also have an extensive global network of contacts, which is a key strategic asset for selecting and securing the speakers. The result is 30+ expert speakers from five continents—hopefully, all speaking live and in-person. We tend to avoid government and economic speakers and focus on those in the wood products business and trade.

Back in the 2010s, we featured a wide variety of global speakers as well as leading domestic industry and market experts and we attracted hundreds of delegates as a result. The Summit will do the same and more, with a distinct focus on global developments in pulp, paper, logs, lumber, and panels. It is going to be very interesting and timely.

What are some of the highlights you expect from the Summit?

Combined, Kevin, his team and I have probably spoken at some 500 conferences during our careers and have attended many dozens of others as delegates. As such, we know well what makes a conference great—and of course the things that have the opposite effect. In this context, our “conference recipe” is built on our experience and what we have learned from our past conferences and delegates. The GLOBAL WOOD SUMMMIT will be the 30^th conference that I have either organized or co-organized.

While it is difficult to predict the conference highlights in advance, our conferences have always achieved top marks as a networking event, including introducing new suppliers to new customers as well as revisiting existing and old ones. The other assured highlight will be the many strategic information exchanges from our expert speakers, including panel sessions on the China and North American markets to create more in-depth discussion. Without doubt, delegates will come away with a sound perspective on what lies ahead in 2025 in terms of market demand growth and price directions for all major forest products. We expect that the resulting conference messages will include some good, some bad and a bit of the ugly!

What’s the cost and where can potential attendees find further details?

Believe it or not, the 2024 Summit is being marketed at the same price as we charged for the Wood Markets conference back in 2016. But that’s only if you take advantage of our early bird rates, which end Wednesday, July 31. The cost for our two-day (plus) event is US$995 per person. Single-day marketing conferences offered by others are about 50% higher than our two-day event with one-third of the speakers.

For more information, including the summit agenda and speakers, you can check out our Global Wood Summit website. For more on the conference partners, go to Russ Taylor Global and ERA Forest Products Research.

Russ Taylor is a global wood business and market consultant with almost 50 years of experience. Russ Taylor Global – Wood Business & Market Consulting is a continuation of the strategic work that Russ has always been doing with industry clients throughout his career. Russ has Bachelor of Science in Forestry and an MBA both from the University of British Columbia and is also a BC registered professional forester (RPF-Ret).