The current weakness in UK roundwood demand is real, but it is more complicated than simply “there isn’t enough demand for timber.” The main problem is that demand from the industries that consume UK logs has weakened or become more price-sensitive.
UK roundwood deliveries were essentially flat in 2025 at 10.4 million green tonnes, but sawmill deliveries fell 1%, pulp/paper fell 4%, while wood-based panels rose 9%. At the same time, UK softwood harvesting fell 4%.
One of the reasons for this is weak construction demand.
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That’s a remarkable amount of work hours for a single machine, the Norcar 600 owned by Erkki Rinne is taken well care of, it even has the original Diesel engine.
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Kieran Anders is a forestry contractor working in the lake district. His work involves hand cutting and extracting timber using a skidder and tractor-trailer forwarder.
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Arwel takes great pride in the fact that the mill has no waste whatsoever, “the peelings are used for children’s playgrounds, gardens and for farm animals in barns in the winter and the sawdust has multiple uses in gardens and farms as well.
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Timber hauliers need to encourage young blood in, and also look after the hauliers we have, we need make the sector a safe and positive place to work.
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A large proportion of UK-grown Sitka spruce ultimately feeds the construction market through sawmills. UK housebuilding and construction have been subdued because of high financing costs, weak consumer confidence and economic uncertainty.
The Timber Development UK 2026 market review describes UK construction demand as lacking momentum, with this putting downward pressure on timber prices.
That feeds backwards:
fewer houses → less structural timber required → sawmills reduce production → less appetite for logs → weaker roundwood demand.
Imported sawn timber competes directly with UK-grown logs
This is another particularly important issue facing UK forestry.
The UK remains heavily dependent on imported wood products. In 2024 it imported 6.3 million m³ of sawnwood, while domestic production was about 3.3 million m³.
So a UK sawmill isn’t competing simply with another British sawmill. It is competing with enormous Scandinavian and European production capacity.
When imported sawn timber is competitively priced, UK sawmills have limited ability to raise their selling prices—and consequently limited ability to pay more for roundwood.
Sawmill margins have been squeezed
European log prices have remained relatively high while selling prices for sawn timber have been under pressure. TDUK reports that this has caused sawmills to reduce production, take inefficient capacity offline and, in some cases, close production lines or mills.
So you can have the strange situation where:
There is a shortage of cheap logs from the sawmill’s perspective, but simultaneously insufficient demand for expensive logs which the UK market is experiencing.
The post-Covid construction boom has disappeared
During 2020–22 there was exceptional demand for timber and building materials.
That caused:
- huge demand for sawnwood
- high log prices
- stockpiling
- exceptionally strong sawmill production
- increased harvesting
That wasn’t a sustainable level of demand.
The subsequent correction has left the industry with a much more cautious supply chain. TDUK describes the 2025 increase in demand as a temporary “demand bubble”, followed by weakening construction demand.
Pulp and paper is no longer the major UK outlet it once was
This is an under-appreciated structural change.
UK roundwood going into integrated pulp and paper mills has fallen dramatically over the long term. Forest Research data shows UK roundwood input falling from roughly 1.5–1.6 million tonnes in the mid-1990s to around 0.4 million tonnes in 2024.
That removes a substantial historical outlet for lower-quality material.
Small roundwood has been particularly weak
This is where things become especially interesting for forestry contractors.
The official Small Roundwood Price Index was 12.4% lower in nominal terms in the six months to September 2025 than the corresponding period a year earlier.
So the problem isn’t only sawlogs.
There is pressure on:
- pulpwood
- chipwood
- small roundwood
- lower-grade material
- some harvesting residues
This can make a harvesting operation much harder to make profitable, because the whole tree value matters.
I wouldn’t describe the situation in the UK as a simple “roundwood demand crisis.” The statistics reveal a more complex picture.
In 2024, UK roundwood deliveries rose by 6% to reach 10.4 million tonnes, with sawmills taking 13% more than they did in 2023. In 2025, total deliveries remained at approximately 10.4 million tonnes. This indicates that the market continues to consume substantial quantities of UK timber.
The underlying issue, however, is that the growth in supply from UK forests is starting to outpace the growth in end-user demand. This could pose a more significant challenge for UK forestry in the coming years.
To Summarise The Current Situation
Weak construction demand
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Lower demand for sawn timber
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Sawmills reduce production / become more selective
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Less willingness to buy logs at previous prices
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Roundwood prices weaken
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Harvesting becomes harder to justify economically
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Standing timber gets held back
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Contractors face lower utilisation and greater price pressure
And there is another problem coming into view: UK forest production isn’t going away. The country has a large area of relatively young conifer plantations approaching harvesting age.
So if domestic processing capacity and timber demand don’t expand, the industry could eventually have more timber available than the market can comfortably absorb.
The outlook is mixed in the short term, but considerably more positive over the longer term. I would not expect UK roundwood demand to suddenly recover to the very strong levels seen around 2021–22
Outlook
The rest of 2026 will be difficult with have weak and patchy sawlog demand and continued price pressure
2027 should see some improvement as the construction industry recovers and sawn timber demand will increase
There is an important sign that the market may already be turning. Forest Research’s latest figures show small-roundwood prices recovering from September 2025, although they remained 8.4% lower in real terms than a year earlier. Sawlog prices, however, were still 31% lower in real terms year-on-year to March 2026.
2026–27: I think it remains tough
The construction market is expected to improve during 2026, but the timing and strength of the recovery remain uncertain. Timber Development UK says a meaningful increase in construction demand is needed before sawmills will increase production significantly.
There is a bigger story developing
The really interesting thing is that UK timber supply and demand are heading in opposite directions over the longer term.
The UK still imports a huge proportion of its sawn timber, while domestic sawmills supply less than 60% of UK sawn-wood demand.
At the same time, Britain’s softwood availability is expected to increase substantially over the coming decades. Forest Research has just published its new 50-year softwood timber availability forecast.
So I don’t think the fundamental problem is that Britain doesn’t need timber.
It is that the processing industry isn’t currently capable of converting all the potential UK-grown timber into products that the market wants at an economic price.
This is the critical issue
I see three possible scenarios:
- No major investment in processing
Then we could have a serious problem around the early-to-mid 2030s:
More mature timber → more harvesting requirement → insufficient sawmill capacity → mills become selective → timber prices weaken → harvesting becomes uneconomic in marginal forests.
- Processing capacity expands
This is the much healthier scenario.
New sawmills, bigger existing mills, engineered-wood production, panels, packaging and other uses absorb more domestic timber.
- Construction and timber-product demand accelerates
This could produce a very different market.
UK-grown timber would increasingly become a strategic resource rather than simply a commodity competing against imported Scandinavian timber.
The danger is actually the next 5–10 years, rather than the long-term demand for wood.
If UK woodland owners continue planting and existing plantations continue moving towards maturity without equivalent investment in processing capacity, we could end up with a situation where there is plenty of timber physically available but insufficient local demand at a price that makes harvesting worthwhile.
That would be particularly damaging to the harvesting sector.
I think this is one of the biggest structural issues facing UK forestry at present.
The encouraging part is that UK construction demand is expected to start recovering, while the UK’s enormous dependence on imported timber means there is plenty of potential for domestic processing to expand.
In short: 2026 looks difficult, 2027–28 should gradually improve, but the real question is whether UK processing capacity expands fast enough to absorb the increasing volume of home-grown timber.
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