"The Russian wood industry has managed to quickly replace the European export markets with Asian ones. Their share in the exports by country has reached 98%, versus some 87% reported last year and 76% in the pre-sanctions period," Roslesinforg said.
The European Union imposed a ban on wood product imports from Russia as part of its fifth sanctions package in April 2022. The EU executive estimated that Russia’s wood product exports made up about 2% of the country’s exports to the 27-nation bloc.
Roslesinforg, which conducts national forest inventories, said Russia’s lumber exports fell 10% in 2023 from the year before, to 20.7 million cubic meters, which it said was above the worst-case scenario forecast of 30%.
China remained the biggest importer of Russian lumber, with roughly 13 million cubic meters of imports (unchanged from 2022), followed by Central Asia’s Uzbekistan with over 2 million (up 8%) and Kazakhstan with 926,000 (up 17%). Other major importers included Azerbaijan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, Iran and Hong Kong.