Winfried Von Loe from the Private Forest Association provided insights into the international sales of Luxembourgish wood. Since demand for high grade wood is low within Luxembourg, most of it is being exported to the highest bidder: “Private forest means economising privately, and that in return means investing into the well-being of the forest and spending money. So, it is in the owner’s best interest to sell to the highest bidder.”
In the past couple of years, Luxembourg has also sold low-quality wood to buyers from Asian countries: “There were a number of great dry spruces from the dry years of 2019 and 2020, which nobody here wanted and we therefore sold to China. They have since remained an interesting market for German, Belgian, and Luxembourgish forest owners.”
Fränk Wolter from the Nature Administration explained that anyone can buy wood from public forests. Since the transaction is managed by intermediaries, the Administration has no control over who buys it in the end.
Wolter noted: “Buyers from Asia do not come here themselves. All wood of which we know that it ends up in the hands of Asian buyers was sold by a European intermediary. Most of them are from Belgium since wood tends to be exported to China via Antwerp.”
Although there are no official statistics, authorities in Luxembourg’s neighbouring countries estimate that by now, more than half of raw wood is being exported to the Far East. A new forest law for Luxembourg, which is currently being drafted, might change this tendency in the future, concluded Wolter.
There is not much demand in Luxembourg for beech and oak wood. Luxembourg wood-processing companies are therefore less affected by Chinese wholesale purchases than their counterparts in the Grand Duchy’s neighbouring countries. In the two Luxembourg sawmills, almost no lumber is procured, but primarily softwood.
