After having risen in December 2023 already, solid wood for pallets was the only packaging wood product to see a price increase, as the German wood packaging, pallet and export packaging association (HPE) reports. Month on month, the price index rose by 5.1 percentage points, bringing the index value to 525.3% in January – a level last recorded in May 2023.
Prices for solid wood, which is used for packaging products, remain unchanged at 186.7% in January.
No improvement so far
Meanwhile, purchase prices of wood-based materials continue their downward trend in 2024. Month on month, nearly identical decreases were recorded in prices for OSB (-2.1 percentage points) and plywood (-2 percentage points).
In the case of OSB, the negative price trend, which has been ongoing since April 2022, is bringing the index value closer to the all-time low of April 2020. As you can see in the time line in our Datacube, the OSB price index was at 72.6% at that time and thus only 14.2 points lower than the value recorded in January this year (86.8%).
| Wood purchase prices of the German Wood Packaging, Pallet and Export Packaging Association; 1/2005 = 100% | ||||||||||||||||
| Packaging wood | 01/2024 | Diff. in % | 12/2023 | Diff. in % | 11/2023 | Diff. in % | 10/2023 | Diff. in % | 09/2023 | Diff. in % | 08/2023 | Diff. in % | 07/2023 | Diff. in % | 06/2023 | Diff. in % |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Solid wood for pallets | 325.3 | 5.1 | 309.5 | 3.7 | 298.5 | –0.1 | 298.7 | –1.5 | 303.3 | –1.2 | 306.9 | –1.0 | 309.9 | –1.7 | 315.2 | –2.6 |
| Solid wood for packaging | 186.7 | 0.0 | 186.7 | 0.5 | 185.8 | –1.6 | 188.7 | –1.4 | 191.4 | –1.4 | 194.2 | –2.0 | 198.1 | –4.3 | 207.0 | –2.4 |
| Plywood for packaging | 191.1 | –2.0 | 195.0 | –0.5 | 195.9 | –3.1 | 202.3 | –1.5 | 205.4 | –1.4 | 208.2 | –1.0 | 210.3 | –2.3 | 215.2 | –1.6 |
| OSB for packaging | 86.8 | –2.1 | 88.6 | –2.6 | 91.0 | –3.5 | 94.3 | –3.5 | 97.7 | –2.6 | 100.3 | –6.2 | 106.9 | –4.9 | 112.5 | –4.2 |
