Since the beginning of the year, the State Enterprise “Forests of Ukraine” has shipped more than 700 thousand cubic meters of wood, which is 60% more than in the same period in 2023, said the company’s CEO Yuriy Bolokhovets.
“After a period of stagnation, sales have revived. The stocks have decreased. The volume of contracted timber at the first quarter auctions has already exceeded 2 million cubic meters,” he wrote on Facebook and added that additional auctions will last until March.
According to him, the amount of contracts for the first quarter has already reached almost UAH 4.1 billion and surpassed the figure for unprocessed wood for the same period last year.
At the same time, Mr. Bolokhovets pointed to the rise in timber prices. Currently, its price averages UAH 2.1 thousand per cubic meter. According to the state enterprise’s experts, after the sale of firewood, it will drop to about 1.9 thousand UAH/cubic meter (in the fourth quarter of last year, the average price was 1.75 thousand UAH/cubic meter).
“Two weeks ago, I talked about the difficult situation on the market, the decline in demand due to the blocking of exports through the western borders. I said that despite all the negative forecasts, I was optimistic. Not much time has passed. The anti-crisis measures taken are working,” the CEO said.
Mr. Bolokhovets said that the company has tightened control over contract compliance. If a tree is put up for auction and purchased, the branch manager must ensure that it is harvested and shipped according to the agreed delivery schedule. The entire volume of unsold timber is immediately put up for additional bidding without delay.
“In order to avoid the accumulation of residues and loss of quality, the plan for firewood harvesting is timely adjusted in accordance with the concluded contracts,” the top manager summarized.
As reported, Ukraine launched a forestry reform in 2016. As part of it, the sale of unprocessed timber at electronic auctions has already been introduced. Since 2021, an interactive map of wood processing facilities has been operating in a test mode in a number of regions.
The industry has implemented the Forest in a Smartphone project, which contains a list of logging tickets for timber harvesting and allows you to check the legality of logging on the agency’s online map.
On June 1, 2023, Ukraine launched a pilot for the electronic issuance of logging tickets and certificates of origin of timber. In addition, the State Enterprise “Forests of Ukraine” has launched a pilot project to procure timber harvesting services through the electronic platform Prozorro.
