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place a limit on how much an international haulier can haul in the country unless they are just coming to collect the material. The taskforce is working to see if there can be any relaxation of that for a period.


One option being considered is setting up depots at halfway points in order that the haulage infrastructure can be optimised – so the ones that normally operate in the north don’t have too much longer of a haul and the ones in the south can travel up and collect from the depots.


“Obviously that all adds significant costs in terms of the operations themselves, but our priority at the moment is just moving the windblow and making sure our harvesting and haulage infrastructure is kept moving,” said Coillte.


Coillte suspended its quarterly log auctions in the immediate aftermath of Eowyn, with market conditions deemed “really not right for auctions”. However, Coillte still plans to offer its normal 1.65 million m3


per year


but will allocate it to customers rather offer some of it via auctions, in order to preserve the value. The pricing mechanism for these annual contracts is linked to the customers’ end markets.


As mentioned, the vast majority of Coillte’s customers – the sawmills – have latent capacity they can put to good use if they can get consistent access to logs. Most are said to have 20-25% additional capacity, with at least one saying that adding an extra shift would boost production by 40-45%. However, labour shortages may prove to be the spanner in the works, with several mills citing the availability of mill workers as “probably the hardest thing”.


And, of course, boosting production is one thing but mills still need to secure end markets for the resulting sawn timber. Thus far in 2025, the mood among sawmillers is relatively positive and, to use that well-worn phrase, “cautiously optimistic” – even among those that suffered damage and a few lost days of production courtesy of Eowyn.


“Last year was excellent for us production- wise,” said one major sawmiller. “It was record-breaking in terms of volume, though the way pricing was, certainly not in turnover.”


He added that the mill had run overtime all of 2024 and had run up to the end of the year, putting it in a good position for this year. And this year had started strong, he said, with products across the board selling well. “Pallets are huge part of our industry and we had a very strong 2024 and its continuing into 2025,” he said. “It’s good to see because it’s an indicator of how things [the wider economy] are going. In the UK the pallet market is probably more reliant on the construction sector than it is here in Ireland


[where the agriculture and pharmaceutical sectors are very strong] but we’ve seen strong demand and price increases there so far this year.”


He added that fencing had also been very strong and while construction in the UK wasn’t anything to write home about, it was “excellent” in Ireland. This ongoing situation over the last few years has prompted the decision to focus more efforts on supplying the UK market with fencing material than construction timber, which, in the UK, is more heavily influenced by the imported C24 price.


The mill is keeping a watchful eye on the type of logs that may come down the track following the Eoywn clear-up saying it “needs every stick we have at the moment because it’s nearly all sold” but adding that it expects a lot of the windblow to be smaller logs, some of which will be more suitable for pulp or chip. “We don’t know what’s coming in terms of log size and diameter and that really impacts our planning and the markets we compete into,” said the sawmiller. “It’s a bit of an unknown at the moment, but we’ll take it as it comes.”


Sawn prices have risen on all products in both the UK and Irish markets, with those in the UK on “a bit of a run, month on month”. More are anticipated, but margins are still compromised by the higher costs of energy, insurance, labour, logistics, and so on. Construction timber is said to have been “very heavily undervalued, particularly towards the end of last year”. “We are driven by what is happening on the imports. The price gap was very close – almost parity – and it has started to widen now. We need that to continue to widen to help us push the much-need price increases through. You could be talking upwards of £30-40/m3


increase on construction timber across Q1 and Q2.”


Another major sawmiller said he was baffled by construction timber pricing at the moment.


“It has really surprised me how flat the prices remained for home-grown construction timber versus the huge increases that the imports have pushed on,” he said. “The UK mills haven’t pushed along that hard on the construction side.


“From an outsider looking in, I’m surprised there hasn’t been a drive forwards. The gap is so high between the C24 and C16 price it’s amazing that they’ve allowed that to happen. Perhaps they want to build market share [rather than chase price], but I know what I would have done.”


He agreed that the construction market in the UK was “dire” but that the equivalent sector in Ireland had taken up the slack, absorbing a lot of the Irish mills’ construction timber.


He added that it had been a good start to the year, with the mill “selling everything”. Fencing had been strong and looked to remain so for the next couple of months at least.


Unlike his compatriots, he felt the pallet


market had been “really poor at the back end of last year and the first two months of 2025” but said he’s seen some improvement since then. He agreed that the pallet market in Ireland was more heavily dependent on exports of food and pharma goods than the UK and said there was “a lot of nervousness” in the country regarding possible tariffs.


A fellow major primary processor said that pallet demand was “steady as she goes – not brilliant, but not bad”, while fencing had been “very strong”.


“Storm Darragh took down a lot of fences across Britain in December, which boosted the market, and it’s been pretty busy since then. We’re under a bit of pressure on fencing, but we’re not letting anyone down. Prices have moved but not by a massive amount – small percentages.”


A fencing and pallet wood specialist said that following a sold-out year right up to Christmas, his mill had turned the year with “less stock than we thought we were going to have because customers didn’t want to get caught with no stock on the ground at the beginning of the year”.


The winter storms that proceeded to knock down fences kick-started the year and the mill was busy.


“Stock is moving, sales are good,” he said, speaking at the beginning of April. “We’re sold out for April, we’ll be sold out for May and I don’t see June being any different.” He cautioned against ramping up production too much in order to soak up the windblow that will come on stream, saying that sales are good at the moment but “you don’t want any extra going into the UK at the moment because it’s still very much on a taut tightrope and could go either way. “We have a delicate market at the moment,” he added. “You would think that with no stocks you could put your prices up but if I put them up by £10-15m3


I wouldn’t sell it.


There is room for modest price increases and that’s about it.”


Speaking of price increases and returning to the Trump administration’s first 100 days, there is a great deal of uncertainty over the “will he, won’t he” question of whether tariffs will be imposed on lumber from countries other than Canada, whose exports to the US are already subject to tariffs.


If, for example, tariffs were to be imposed on Scandinavian lumber, it could result in more of that material being diverted to the UK market.


“Britain is a big target to move stuff to,” said a contact. ■


www.ttjonline.com | May/June 2025 | TTJ


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