HELSINKI - Finland, renowned for its harsh Arctic winters, is struggling to collect enough timber from its forests to feed the country's paper mills as an early spring thaw makes the ground too soft for logging trucks.
Finnish paper makers -- including some of the world's largest firms in the sector -- said on Wednesday that the late onset of winter and the early arrival of spring was playing havoc with wood supplies because logging trucks need the forest tracks they use to remain frozen to carry their heavy loads.
Finland is emerging from its shortest winter on record with temperatures in southern Finland climbing to 17 degrees Celsius on Tuesday, the warmest temperature recorded in March, the Finnish meteorological institute said.
Many forest tracks are proving too soft in both Finland and Russia for trucks to do their job, causing a wood shortage and prompting paper makers to consider imports of eucalyptus.
The short-lived winter has heightened concerns about global warming in a country which stretches into the Arctic Circle.
"Scarcity of wood will continue at least until the autumn," said Juha Mantyla, Forest Director at Metsaliitto, the main owner of Finnish paper maker M-real.
M-real's bigger rivals -- the world's top paper and board maker, Stora Enso, and the largest magazine paper maker, UPM-Kymmene -- also foresee problems.
"This has been a very problematic winter -- winter came late, and then late January to early February it was too cold for some machinery to operate, and now the unusually warm weather hampers logging again," said Matti Karjula, Stora Enso's head of wood sourcing.
The companies said they hope night-time temperatures remain below zero, enabling them to move wood to mills at night.
The problem is even more pronounced in Russia and wood exports to Finland have suffered. Russia exports 17 million cubic metres of wood to Finland a year, about 20 percent of total Finnish usage.
"Stora Enso has a gap of about 10-15 percent, or 50,000 to 100,000 cubic metres, compared to regular levels in Russian imports of birch fibrewood," Karjula said.
All companies said they are planning to compensate for low Russian imports with supplies from the Baltic, in addition to increasing logging in Finland.
Stora's Karjula and UPM's Sunabacka said prices for large logs have increased considerably, but price hikes for fibrewood have been much more moderate.
Story by Sakari Suoninen
REUTERS NEWS SERVICE
