The 2023 Wood Industry Overview Report by the Vietnam Timber and Forest Products Association shows that 2023 is a difficult year for Vietnam's wood industry as consumers tighten their spending. However, wood chip and pellet exports still earned nearly 2.9 billion USD.

Specifically, our country exported nearly 14.42 million tons of wood chips, worth 2.22 billion USD, accounting for 16.8% of the total export turnover of the entire wood industry. Compared to 2022, wood chip exports decreased by 8.8% in volume and 20.4% in value, but increased by 5.9% in volume and increased sharply by 27.7% in value compared to 2021.

Vietnam's wood chips are exported to 13 markets. China and Japan are the two largest import markets of Vietnam, accounting for 92.4% of total output and 92.2% of total export value.

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Wood chip and wood pellet exports reached 2.9 billion USD. Illustration photo: Green Mech

With wood pellets, our country exported 4.67 million tons last year, earning nearly 680 million USD, down 4.3% in volume and 13.7% in value compared to 2022, accounting for 5.2% of the total export turnover of the wood industry.

Vietnam's wood pellet products will be exported to 22 countries and territories in 2023. Japan and South Korea remain the two largest customers of Vietnamese wood pellets.

Of which, Japan imported more than 2.8 million tons of pellets from our country, worth 438 million USD, up 12.4% in volume and 14.3% in value compared to 2022. In contrast, Korea imported only more than 1.7 million tons of pellets, worth nearly 214 million USD, down 24.5% in volume and down 43.3% in value compared to 2022.

Commenting on the market for these products this year, Mr. To Xuan Phuc - Executive Director of the Forest Products Trade Policy Program, Forest Trends Organization - said that wood pellets still have many opportunities to boost exports to the Japanese market. In particular, the pellet market in Korea is not expected to have many fluctuations in the near future because importers of this country prioritize cheap pellets.

Regarding wood chips, according to Mr. Phuc, China's import demand tends to continue to decline in the coming time, leading to a decrease in wood chip export prices in this market.

According to the Forestry Department, in 2023, the whole industry will exploit about 19 million steres of firewood (a unit of volume of firewood). This is the main input material for the production of wood chips and pellets.

In addition, by-products of the wood processing and manufacturing industry such as wood scraps, wood chips, shavings, sawdust, etc. are also used to produce pellets and wood chips.

Wood exports recovered strongly at the beginning of this year. In January, wood chip exports reached 217.5 million USD, up 21.7% compared to the same month last year; wood pellets reached 73.5 million USD, up 24.1%.

Experts predict that wood chips and wood pellets still have a lot of potential and room for development. In particular, wood pellets turnover could reach 1 billion USD in the near future. Enterprises need to consider investing in building raw material sources to ensure a stable supply for production and export.

American customers love it, a product with a trade surplus of 10 billion USD . The trade surplus of this product reached 10.13 billion USD in just 11 months of 2023. This is also the product with the highest trade surplus in the agricultural sector.