Russia is Now Japan’s Number One Market for Lumber Imports

SEATTLE (Scrap Monster): More than 71,700 cubic metres of lumber were traded from Russia’s Far East into Japan in April—a 43% increase from last year, making Putin’s Russia Japan’s most important market for lumber imports.

That is according to new data provided by the Japanese Ministry of Finance, revealing that Japan—the world’s fourth largest importer of timber—imported 343,700 cubic metres of lumber for April (an increase of 73% on last year), with the lion’s share coming from Russia, Sweden (71,700 cubic metres), Canada (67,800 cubic metres), and Finland (62,100 cubic metres).

As it stands, the Japanese government is one of the few in the West not to impose war sanctions on Russian products, including lumber, pulp, and glulam. Last week, Vladimir Putin met with Akie Abe, the widow of Shinzo Abe, to celebrate a relationship that saw the late Abe meet with Putin on 27 occasions to improve relations between the neighbours:

“We remember his contribution to developing Russian-Japanese cooperation,” Putin said. I know his dream—and he pursued it earnestly—was concluding a peace treaty between our nations. We made significant progress together on this path. The current situation differs; we will not address that aspect today.”

 Japan, like the United States and Australia, has some of the softest compliance actions against Russian timber – with the countries not following the United Kingdom, European Union, and more than 130 global ENGOs in introducing a sanction on all timber imports after the Ukrainian Parliament asked all “friendly countries to sanction Russian timber.”

Last year, Wood Central reported that the European Organization of the Sawmill Industry (EOS) and the European Confederation of Woodworking Industries (CEI-Bois) both sent an open letter to the Executive Vice-President of the European Commission and Commissioner for Trade, Valdis Dombrovskis, urging the European Union to push the Japanese for a total ban on Russian timber.

In the letter, they said that “a concerted effort to persuade Japan to stop importing Russian lumber would be a significant step in further impacting the Russian economy and its war machine,” adding that “our trade posture towards Russia, and sanctions in particular, should be coordinated and coherent among the coalition of countries that have decided to punish Russia’s unprovoked, unjustified, and barbaric invasion of Ukraine.”

“Until 2021, the European Union imported significant quantities of wood products from Russia (and Belarus), much more than what Japan is currently importing, even in proportion to the larger EU population and economy,” it continued. “As an industry and a society, we should be proud that in some months, we were able to give up importing Russian wood products, swiftly readjusting and adapting to the new reality.”

The push to crackdown on Russian timber exports comes after Wood Central revealed that more than €1.5 billion worth of Russian timber has been smuggled into the European Union since June 2022, with all 27 states implicated in a ‘blood trade’ that has led to 500,000 cubic metres entering Europe and making a mockery of sanctions.

Courtesy: www.woodcentral.com.au