Polish wood goes abroad. Minister from Poland 2050 points out the culprits

In August, the Minister of Climate and Environment announced that the government plans to limit the export of unprocessed wood from Poland, especially to China. However, the industry does not see officials preparing regulations. This results in the valuable raw material going abroad, and Polish producers having to overpay for it.

What about the ban on the export of Polish timber?

In the first week of August, the Director General of the State Forests announced that he had submitted a proposal to the Ministry of Climate and Environment for changes to the law that would limit the export of unprocessed wood from Poland outside the European Union. Minister Paulina Hennig-Kloska announced that she would “urgently” deal with the change in two acts. The changes would result in the export of wood from Poland outside the territory of EU countries, member states of the European Free Trade Agreement (EFTA), parties to the agreement on the European Economic Area and the Swiss Confederation being associated with a penalty of restriction of liberty or a fine of up to EUR 5 million.

The State Forests would like the ban to be in force from January 1, 2025 for three years.

Who sells Polish wood abroad?

Why is it important? For several years now, Polish companies have been selling huge amounts of wood abroad. In the EU, the largest recipient is Germany, and outside the EU – China. Rafał Szefler, director of the Polish Chamber of Commerce of the Timber Industry, said a few months ago in an interview with money.pl that everyone except the State Forests loses from the increase in exports to China.

– Wood is exported abroad at a 0% rate, a finished product is manufactured there, which often returns to Poland. There is less and less wood for our industry, prices are artificially raised. This is a paradox – wood is cheaper everywhere, and here it is about 20-30% more expensive, because we allow everyone in Poland to buy it – he explained in an interview with money.pl.

After three weeks of those announcements, we can say: I’m checking. Money.pl describes that nothing has changed in the matter, but Minister Hennig-Kloska pointed the finger at those guilty of exporting Polish wood. In her opinion, PiS politicians are responsible for this. “The wood that left Poland in the first months of this year was contracted at the turn of November and December,” she wrote on social media.

And further: “They knew they had lost, they decided to continue to harm until the end. Now they are shouting, and we are fixing. New tender rules, before the new purchasing season, will stabilize the Polish timber market.”

Polish wood goes abroad

The State Forests categorically distance themselves from accusations that they are making money from the export of Polish timber.

– It is not the State Forests that sell timber to China – so far, no Chinese company has registered in our sales system and no Chinese company has purchased timber directly from the State Forests – said Rafał Zubkowicz, head of the press spokesman’s team at the General Directorate of the State Forests.

So who sells them? LPs sell raw wood to about 30 companies with foreign identification numbers, which – as intermediaries – resell the wood abroad. According to PKO BP’s analysis based on data from the FAO (Statistical Office of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations) and Eurostat, the export of raw wood from Poland to China intensified in 2018, when it increased by 496% year-on-year, and a year later (an increase of 167% year-on-year). In 2020, China accounted for the largest share of Polish wood exports (45%).

Poland is the world’s seventh exporter of utility timber. The largest seller is New Zealand, followed by the Czech Republic, Russia, Germany, the United States and Canada. In terms of production, according to FAO data, in 2021 we were in 12th place, just behind Chile and India.

These are the numbers cited by money.pl: the latest data provided by LP show that in the years 2019-2023 a total of 14.3 million tons of unprocessed wood from Poland was sold abroad.

Referring to the calculations of the Central Statistical Office, the State Forests also reported that in the years 2019-2023 we exported the most unprocessed wood to Germany – 5.3 million tons. Timber shipments to our western neighbors accounted for 37 percent of exports during that time.