During annual Market Discussions at the UNECE Timber Committee on 11-12 October in Geneva, experts forecast an upturn in wood and paper products markets (consumption, production and trade) in 2010 and 2011 for the UNECE region. Forest products markets are rebounding from a consumption drop of 12% in 2009.
The forecast improvement is strongest in Europe and Russia. In North America the housing crash in the United States from a peak of 2.2 million housing starts, which was the main cause for the downturn, may have bottomed out in 2009 at less than 500,000. In North America, without this main driver for wood products, all forest products markets, except wood energy, fell in 2009, and were forecast to rise only slightly in…... [meer...]