The volume of roundwood input purchases decreased by 3% last year, new Central Statistics Office (CSO) data shows.

The wood input purchases by industry data shows that the total volume of roundwood input purchases was 3.1m m3 in 2022, a decrease of 3% from 2021.

The significant fall in supply from private forests is the main reason for this decrease, which would have been much higher had Coillte not increased supply by 9%.

The CSO doesn’t refer to Coillte by name in the report but continues to use the term “publicly-owned forests”, even though all non-private timber sales are sourced from Coillte forests.

Roundwood purchases from publicly owned forests made up 72% (2.23m m3) of purchases with the remainder (0.79m m3) from privately-owned forests.

Large sawlog accounted for the highest proportion of roundwood purchase volume at 40% in 2022, followed by small sawlog (25%) and pulpwood (25%).

Purchases of non-roundwood products (including brash and tree stumps, woodchip, and sawdust) amounted to 424,000t.