Gabrielsson presented market trends for Algeria and the MENA region at the conference. After the fall of Algeria's president and in light of the imminent new elections, change is in the country's air. A lot of large-scale projects, however, have been postponed. The Algerian National Statistics expect a GDP growth rate of 1.5 to 2% for the current year.
According to Gabrielsson, the advantages of the Algerian market are the fact that Algeria is currently undergoing a phase of modernization and that a growing population of young people is in need of housing space. Furthermore, an industrialization of the wood sector - however slow - is clearly noticeable.
Disadvantages are that competitive products are winning market shares, the administrative burden of import products have a negative impact and the Algerian dinar is very weak compared to the euro.
Sweden and Finland are only delivering pine lumber and Austria and Germany only spruce lumber, Gabrielsson reports.
Austria exported 256,000 m³ (-21%) of spruce lumber in the first seven months, and Germany delivered 26,000 m³ (-13%). Sweden supplied 226,000 m³ of pine lumber (-37%) and Finland shipped 255,000 m³ (-27%) to Algeria.
Uni4Marketing is a corporate merger of SCA, Holmen, Södra and Martinsons. The cooperation is producing almost one third (5.5 million m3/yr) of Sweden's total lumber capacity. Uni4Marketing's markets are Egypt, Algeria, Morocco, Libya, Tunisia Sudan, Jordan, Saudi-Arabia and Yemen.
