Mr. Thang Van Thong - Vice Chairman of Vietnam Timber and Forest Products Association, Deputy Head of the Vietnam Wood Chips Association Branch - had an interview with a reporter from Industry and Trade Newspaper.

Could you please share about the current situation of exporting wood chips?

Export of woodchips is slowing down, prices are falling. At ports specializing in exporting woodchips such as Nghi Son International Port (Thanh Hoa) and Cai Lan Port (Quang Ninh), the inventory is very large.

Why are wood chips still mainly exported?

The main reason is that from the end of September until now, the export situation of woodchips is slowing down and the price is falling, down by about 15 USD/ton compared to the end of September. It is expected that the price reduction level will only slow down around the beginning of the month. twelfth.

The low price of chips at this time is partly due to the economic recession, but the main reason is that the ships no longer "eat" Vietnamese goods and move to buy other countries. Because of the same price, but the quality of woodchips in other countries is higher.

The price of wood chips now is also different from last year. Last year, an export ship cost about 60 billion, and now one ship goes out at about 100 billion. Same cargo ship, same weight but different cost, more capital used.

China is Vietnam's largest woodchip consumption market, accounting for 90% of exports. It will be very difficult to find new markets because the EU and the US both have pulp mills and their sources of raw materials. In China alone, they have a lot of corporations making paper factories, meanwhile, the raw material area is very small, so they have to import raw materials.

Before this situation, in the last months of the year, the most difficult for businesses is still the financial problem. We also only hope to remove finance from two sources: Firstly, the company has a backlog of VAT refunds from the tax industry for woodchip businesses and the opening of credit room from banks.

Is China the easiest market and Vietnamese businesses also choose the easiest option?

No, currently the Japanese market accounts for 15%, if they want to export more to 15-16%, they can't import their products because of the size of their paper mills and no further development. While China develops more paper mills, so our scale is suitable for the Chinese market , without any other solution.

Korea also has only one paper mill, Japan has a total of 4 paper mills, meanwhile, China has 10 paper mills, the capacity of factories in China is also larger than that of Japan and Korea. . Currently, Southeast Asian countries that use woodchip materials mainly from Vietnam are China, Japan, and Korea. China imports about 60% of wood chips from Vietnam, the remaining 40% they import from other countries.

If the market remains as it is now, the export price will still be maintained. But if the price of oil falls, importers will find sources elsewhere with better prices and bring the price of Vietnam back to the original level.

Mr. Thang Van Thong - Vice Chairman of Vietnam Wood and Forest Products Association, Deputy Head of Vietnam Wood Chips Association

How do you evaluate the problem of increasing export market share for the woodchip industry?

There are currently 2 problems. Firstly, the raw material area is only there, if you want to increase it, there will be a revolution to change from seedlings to planting methods, such as bringing productivity from 80 tons / 1 ha to 160 tons / ha, then it will be competitive. compete with other countries. However, at present, our raw material area is only there, so it is difficult to compete.

Second, other countries do not use tree trunks for furniture and exteriors. Vietnam uses wood trees in 4 parts: Deep processing (interior, exterior); plywood furniture; woodchips; tablets. Therefore, plantation timber is divided into material areas in harmony for all wood processing industries in general. When any stage slows down, the raw materials will be transferred to other stages.

A person who has been in the woodchip industry for 22 years. There are suggestions that we are exporting raw materials. But in my opinion, we can't do anything but export this raw material because we can't process other products with higher value. Unless the Government allows us to make pulp mills in Vietnam.

As he shared, we are exporting materials and importing paper, will businesses in the association calculate the plan to do from A - Z?

Yes. We have proposed a pulp mill in the Central region but it has not been accepted because of concerns about environmental pollution , can wastewater from paper production be treated? But in fact today, technology has been very advanced, including wastewater treatment technology.

If we can make a domestic pulp mill, the effect will be very good, we will reduce the raw export and form better raw materials, better prices, higher values.

In fact, state-owned enterprises are still doing it, such as An Hoa Paper Factory or Bai Bang Paper Factory. However, this investment is also a rather risky problem for private enterprises . By investing in a pulp mill with billions of dollars in capital. If there is a problem in the waste treatment chain, the risk of bankruptcy is great.

Thank you sir!