22 | Focus on OSB: Rest of the World
REDUCES FROM LOFTY HEIGHTS
OSB DEMAND
OSB markets are not as healthy as they were a year ago, due to energy and raw material price inflation, together with weaker economic and construction data in many countries conspiring to dampen demand. Stephen Powney reports
Above: Küpeliler Endüstri AS produced the first board on its new OSB line at Kutahya
arkets for OSB products have been more challenging in recent months. The lofty heights of 2021 and the first half of 2022 saw incredible margins for OSB producers and some record-breaking financial results.
M It was inevitable that such large demand
could not continue forever and with the multiple challenges of energy and raw material price inflation coupled with a weaker economic environment and geo- political challenges such as the Ukraine conflict, OSB demand has fallen and markets have been correcting. As we saw in our North America Focus on OSB preceding this article, when times are
good in the OSB sector then profits are very high, but that can change relatively quickly. Still, the product is widely expected to play a leading role in wood-based panels growth in the years to come and number of expansion projects in Europe and beyond are currently planned.
This report deals with Europe and the Rest of the World, namely Asia, South America, the MENA region and Oceania. At the end of 2021, we estimate OSB production capacity for these regions at just under 16 million m3
.
North American installed capacity is estimated at 22.5 million m3
same as a year ago. So total combined WBPI | April/May 2023 |
www.wbpionline.com , broadly the
world OSB installed capacity we estimate at approximately 38.5m3
.
Chinese capacity expansion remains difficult to verify accurately and without a press size for some of these new projects, it’s difficult to give an estimation for their capacity. But we are aware of activity in the Chinese OSB sector and predict growth in the country’s OSB capacity. The European Panel Federation’s most recent OSB production stats are contained in its EPF annual report 2021. It says OSB production in EPF member countries climbed by 2% to 7.2 million m3
in 2021, a much
smaller growth compared to softboard and plywood for that year. The EPF’s new figures
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