This week, the Arctic cold snap has passed, and logistics across North America have basically returned to normal, but SPF sales are still light, and there is no phenomenon of catch-up purchases. The overall market remains at the level before the cold snap, the transaction price of the benchmark variety secondary 2X4 remains unchanged, the size of other wide plates rises slightly by less than 1%, and the price of other sizes of tertiary materials is flat except for 2X4 slightly falling by 1%, and the economic grade 2X4 is the only variety that has risen significantly, with an increase of more than 3%, and the price of economic wide plates has not changed. For the time being, the market is still in a low price balance, showing a state of supply and demand, and lacking enough momentum to trigger a significant rise or fall. This situation of slight fluctuations is likely to continue for some time to come.
European lumber selling prices fell slightly this week in the eastern states of the United States, mainly due to the resumption of logistics for SPF supplies in Canada. The price of selected secondary timber sizes has generally fallen by about 1%, but the single variety of secondary 2X4 with a length of 4.88 meters has remained prominent, and the selling price per cubic meter is 30 US dollars higher than that of other sizes in the same class.
This week, Canada's Whistleford Wood Group abruptly announced that it would permanently close its FraserLake plant, which produces 250,000 cubic meters of sawn timber a year and employs 175 people. The closure was due to the lack of a local supply of all types of logs at reasonable prices. And this is the biggest problem facing the forestry industry in British Columbia, Canada, as the so-called "Gou Zheng is fiercer than the tiger", the world's most powerful forestry sawn timber base, survived more than a decade of sweeping the pine beetle plague, but could not survive the left-wing party ruling period that tried to stifle the sawmill industry.
The CME standard lumber futures contract for March hovered around $550 per thousand board feet on Monday, as it did the week before. Immediately after the Wesford announcement on Monday night, futures jumped to $566 immediately after opening on Tuesday, and gradually increased in the following days, reaching as high as $577 on Friday before finally closing at $575.5. Clearly, in the long run, shrinking supply will push prices higher.