Thailand
Overview of timber sector of Thailand
Supply chain actors
Main actors are big private companies. However, the Royal Forest department is encouraging smallholders to increase their potential in the market. Thailand supply chains of wood and timber products are complex and extensive. Some of the timber and wood products are of species, such as teak and dipterocarps, which can also originate from natural forests. This risks issues related to identification of source and traceability. However, for this Thailand has developed a system for assuring the legality (THA-TLAS) of its timber.
Production and processing
Main harvested species
The bulk of domestic wood supply is from plantation species: this includes timber species, such as teak and eucalyptus but also wood which is derived as a by-product of agricultural process, such as mango and durian wood. By far the largest volume of this type of wood is rubber. Thailand is also a major importer of timber from a large number of countries, not only from within the Asia-Pacific region, but also from Africa, the EU and the Americas. This is mostly processed into products that are exported again. The range of wood types and sources is broad and includes softwood from New Zealand and South American countries, high quality species from Africa and the Pacific as well as rubberwood and teak from Thailand’s immediate neighbor countries.
The domestic wood-based industry is trying to meet the country's needs, but it is faced with a shortage of raw material. The logging ban has drastically cut wood supplies. The industry currently relies to a great extent on imported wood, as well as on wood from plantations (rubber and other species), and even on illegally harvested wood. Large and increasing quantities of processed wood products are imported.
Export
Thailand’s leading wood product exports are sawn wood, paper and paperboard, fiberboard, particleboard and wooden furniture and furniture parts (mostly made from rubberwood). Only a very small volume of unprocessed logs is exported each year (mostly plantation-grown teak) by the Forest Industry Organization, which is the only legally authorized entity for exporting unprocessed logs.
Logistics infrastructure
The main ports from which timber and wood products are exported, are Bangkok port (Khlong Toei) and Su Ngai Kolok port (in the south of the Thailand).
Data table
| Production (X 1000m3) |
Imports (X 1000m3) |
Domestic consumption (X 1000m3) |
Exports (X 1000m3) |
|
|---|---|---|---|---|
| logs | 17.000 | 13 | 2.292 | 14 |
| Sawnwood | 4.300 | 522 | 138 | 3.578 |
| Veneer | 185 | 12 | 129 | 134 |
| Plywood | 120 | 1 | 362 | 91 |
ITTO (2019), data 2017