Browsing by Subject "export barriers"

Finland’s sawmill industry is under a transformation, that can be viewed as a kind of a process of creative destruction, where the industry is deformed by the changing surrounding circumstances. Behind these changing surroundings are especially the trends that shape global business environment and which are affecting the demand and supply of Finnish sawn timber products. The export of Finnish softwood sawn timber has grown the last few years due to the rise in global demand for sawn timber, but the growth of the export has come from outside of traditional export market, Europe. Due to the low demand in the traditional Finland’s export countries of sawn timber, eyes have moved towards new market areas. As an example of this is this study, which started from the desire of the finnish sawmill industry to gain information of a new market, Turkey. In this study a broad picture of Turkey’s softwood sawn timber markets is given with a close look at the potential customer segments, their geographical location and preferencies for sawn timber. Also the demand trends and factors affecting the demand of sawn timber products are covered. The theoretical framework of the study is based on the Information Environment model by Juslin and Hasen and also on the study of Leonidou about different trade obstacles (1995). Both have also affected to the collection of both secondary data and interview material. For this study several Finnish and Turkish sawmill industry professionals from different stakeholder groups have been interviewed. This study is based primarily on qvalitative research that has utilized statistical data. Finland has exported a very narrow product pallette to Turkey, consisting mostly of high quality redwood sawn timber, especially of knotless sideboards. Behind this narrow palette are multiple factors e.g. keen competition and lack of wooden construction. Already at present, Turkey is an important market for the Finnish sawmills as the export quantities have rosen rapidly. Based on the findings of this study one can speculate that the growth rate of the export of sawn timber from Finland to Turkey is decreasing, especially due to the narrow product palette. However, Finnish sawn timber is relatively new in the market and it has reached only some areas of Turkey.