Weather situation sends cold shivers down the spine of the The Swedish sawmill business

Mr Kristian Areskog, who has been timber manager of the Swedish pulp and paper company SCA since 1993, says that this is by far the worst situation we have had since I started working for the company in.

At the same time as we are plagued by the non-existent winter, business is booming and we are producing at maximum capacity, but the winter seems to have gone on holiday. This is extremely bad timing. The demand for both sawn timber and pulpwood is very strong, but the ground is so soft that forest roads are useless for hauling out the timber. The situation is particularly problematic in spruce forests. Some forest companies suffer from acute problems says Mr Areskog.

Mr Olov Söderström, timber manager of the forest company Norrskog, says that so far the company's plants have not had to cut down production. However, demand is so strong that if the winter had been normal we could have added an extra work shift in some sawmills. In the present situation it's not possible because we don’t get enough timber. Like his colleague Kristian Areskog he thinks that the situation is worse than in many years.