22 | Focus on OSB: Rest of the World
SEEKING STABILITY
OSB production is expected to creep up even though the key construction sector and many economies continue to have difficulties, reports Stephen Powney
Above: Kronospan OSB press line at Rivne, Ukraine I
n this report last year, WBPI signalled that 2025 in all probability would see some
growth in the OSB sector. Market sentiment at the moment suggests that is likely to be the case, notwithstanding the continuing challenging economics and uncertain geopolitical situation currently. 2025 European OSB production forecasts from the European Panel Federation (EPF) will not be released until June at the EPF AGM in Berlin, when the official 2024 European OSB production figures (EU27, UK, EFTA regions) will also be released. Slight improvements in demand and production are the most likely scenario for the 2024 stats and 2025 forecast. In terms of new capacity developments – the main focus of this report – there is news of new OSB mill plans in Chile and Kazakhstan, while several plants have been completed in China and one in Ukraine. Several OSB capacity expansion projects
have also been completed in Europe. There is not much activity on the new mill front in Europe outside of Russia, with information on the latter harder to verify due to the ongoing war in Ukraine.
This report deals principally with
market dynamics and production capacity investments and changes, focusing on Europe and the Rest of the World, namely Asia, South America, the MENA region and Oceania.
At the end of 2024, we estimate OSB installed production capacity for these regions at 17,863,000m3
, with the European
portion (including Russia, Ukraine and Belarus) at approximately 11,403,000m3 just over 1 million m3
(up compared to 2023).
Our North America Focus on OSB – preceding this report (pp12-21)– has already outlined the situation with North America, showing an installed 2024 capacity at 23,896,000m3
. WBPI | April/May 2025 |
www.wbpionline.com
So, total combined world OSB installed capacity we estimate at approximately 41,759,000m3
.
In China, it is important to point out the popularity of hybrid panels featuring OSB cores and PB faces. It is a difficult product to categorise, as the OSB part is only a portion of the board and specific output of the different layers is not broken down precisely.
EUROPE In Europe, the EPF’s most recent annual statistics for OSB are for 2023 when OSB was the sole panel product area that saw production growth in the EU27/UK/EFTA region at +2% to 6.6 million m3 million m3
production of 6.741 million m3
). EPF’s forecast for 2024 was a , (+2.2%).
Note these figures relate to production, not capacity and are for EU27 countries (whereas WBPI statistics include additional countries). The EPF consumption rate for 2024
(2022: 6.5
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