Current Situation in Switzerland:
The current situatio in Switzerland regarding corona virus also affects the timber market. Loss of sales markets, bottlenecks in transport and storage capacities and uncertain development of the construction industry represents challenges for the industry and lower demand. In Italy and France, the processing companies have been partially or completely shut down. It must be expected that a large part of the amount of wood must now be sold and processed domestically. It must be assumed that these bottlenecks will increase because of construction site closures, illness-caused failures of chauffeurs or failures of trucks and machines that may not be repaired in the near future.
The number of Wood-fired furnaces decreased in 2018 by around 11'500 plants compared to 2017 (decrease of 2.0%).
Interesting facts about wood:
- Around 6% of the Swiss forest area is reserved
- About half of the wood is sold as "trunk wood", around a third is "energy wood"
- The annual wood consumption in Switzerland, including imported wood, is almost 11 million m3
- The total stock of wood in the Swiss forest is about 427 million m3
Vocabulary:
timber market = Holzmarkt
sales market = Absatzmarkt
bottlenecks = Engpässe
sold = hier bedeutet es abgesetzt
domestically = (im Inland)
construction site closures = Baustellenschliessungen
furnaces = Feuerungen
For more information we've put up a link:
Facts (waldschweiz.ch)
We found another interesting website from the government. The graphic is also from there (under Swiss wood energy statistics, the first PDF-document --> page 8)
Interesting website and graphic, 2020 (bfe.admin.ch)
Team: Zeynep & Nicole