Bottleneck on the sawn timber market: Euroblock shines as reliable supplier

The wood packaging material industry is reminded of bulk toilet paper purchases: Affordable good quality sawn timber is a rare commodity at the moment. There is even talk of supply disruptions regarding certain grades. In this precarious market situation, Euroblock supplies its customers with high-quality products as usual in its role as the leading distribution partnership for pallet blocks and packaging timber.

The first alerts from the industry reached the media in Mid-November. In a statement, the German Federation for Wood Packaging, Pallets & Export Packaging HPE warns about an impending pallet shortage resulting from a generally high demand for wood and poor round timber quality. This concerning development has several reasons and multiplying factors. For once, high demands from the construction industry and from overseas and our European neighbours make market prices for good sawn timber sky rocket. Secondly, large quantities of damaged timber spell high material losses and additional sorting costs for packaging material manufacturers. Logging bans, round timber being shipped to China by the container load as well as bottlenecks in the transport and import of sawn timber from Eastern Europe additionally worsen the sawn timber shortage – as does the stark increase in demand from the DIY field, whose customers buy more and more in the age of Covid. Not least, wood packaging manufacturers are tasked with enduring fluctuating order intake, for instance from the automotive industry and its suppliers, who were already in bad shape before the pandemic even began.

Packaging timber in goog qualities is rare like never before. Euroblock has proven itself as a reliable supplier and partner to the European pallet industry.

Stable business relationships – even in the face of growing pressure

In Germany alone, the wood packaging sector demands a grossed 6 million cubic metres of wood annually. In light of the factors mentioned, industry companies are having a hard time meeting customer requirements and even ensuring export capabilities. One thing is for sure: The shaken European pallet and wood packaging industry can rely on Euroblock as a stable partner. Euroblock continues to supply manufacturers with particle board blocks and packaging timber at the usual high quality. Euroblock Managing Director Leonhard Scherer thinks that his company is prepared for the crisis within a crisis. After all, topics such as resource management and sustainability have been playing a big role at Euroblock for decades:

Running five sawmills in Germany, the Czech Republic and Austria, Euroblock is well prepared for anything and able to relieve customers with continuous delivery capabilities and flexible logistics. From today's perspective, the situation will remain tense for a few more months and price increases can be expected, at least for sawn timber, Scherer predicts.

Euroblock: A steady partner for a dynamic industry

Euroblock-Verpackungsholz GmbH was founded in 1998 and is a distribution partnership for packaging timber. Pfeifer Holz GmbH based in Imst/Austria and Dutch Presswood International B.V. from Ermelo are the two 50 % shareholders. Operating four production locations in Germany and the Netherlands as well as seven sales locations, Euroblock covers a pallet block market share of approx. 42 %.

Its annual production capacity is more than 1 million cubic metres of pallet blocks (which can be used to produce 150 million pallets) and 700,000 cubic metres of packaging timber.