Draft PRESS RELEASE GESBois: Future wood raw material supply in doubt

Since more than 30 years, an annual forum on the future raw wood supply and consumption for the wood-based panels, pulp and paper industries takes place under the name GES-Bois (Groupe d’Etudes Statistiques des Bois pour les Industries des Pâtes et des Panneaux). GES-Bois used to be organised by the French Pulp and Paper Federation in Paris.

To extend the concept as well as the European representation of this event, the Confederation of European Paper Industries (CEPI) and the European Panel Federation (EPF) took over the organisation. The first CEPI-EPF GES-Bois meeting was held on 2 April 2003 at the EPF offices in Brussels and was a huge success. GES-Bois gatheres a unique audience of wood purchasers from the wood-based panels, pulp and paper industries from all over Europe.

EPF presented the evolution of the European wood-based panels industries, where the particleboard and MDF industry consumed more than 28 million dry tonnes of raw wood during 2002, equivalent to 117 million stères. For the next years, an additional supply of 345,000 dry tonnes or 1.4 million stères will be required. CEPI reported that the European pulp and paper industries consumed 372 million stères of raw wood during 2002. For the 2003-2004 period, wood demand for the pulp and paper industry in Europe is expected to increase by 6.7 million stères.

Supported by the positive ecological profile of their products, the growing pulp, paper and wood-based panels industries will utilise increasing volumes of the unique renewable raw material wood in the future. Recent work by the European Commission demonstrates that this growing storage of CO2 in wood and paper products creates a significant carbon sink, thereby contributing positively to the combat against climate change. Thus, the outlook for these industries should be one of prosperity.

However, the wood and paper industries are confronted with increasing competition from the energy sector for their wood raw material. Mrs Alakangas (VTT Processes – Eubionet) demonstrated that the use of biomass for energy consumption is indeed increasing, mainly in Sweden, as the production of primary energy from wood-based energy was boosted in recent years, whilst the electricity production from wood-based biomass in the EU doubled in less than 10 years. This competition already caused closures of wood-based panel plants and a CEPI wood availability study showed that their could be a dramatic shortfall of wood for the forest-based industries by 2010. CEPI and EPF therefore stressed that wood should be given priority as a raw material for the forest-based industries and should only be used for energy production at the end of its life cycle.

The representative of the European Commission, Mrs Perez-Latorre, confirmed that the Commission is aware of these problems and would not intend to support traditional uses of renewable energies. She stated that the focus of the European policy has been adjusted and aims at promoting new renewable energy sources other than wood-based biomass as well as innovative energy solutions. Accordingly, the European targets for biomass energy would have already been lowered somewhat. EPF will monitor whether this indeed secures the wood raw material supply for the future.

Following the success of this meeting, CEPI and EPF intend to jointly organise a next GESBois event in autumn 2003 or spring 2004.
Brussels, 9 April 2003