Japan is the second largest wood chip importer in the world after China, accounting for about one third of the world’s total imports. In all industrial fields in Japan, the paper industry relies heavily on wood. Therefore, Japan’s pulp mills have long relied on imported wood fibers. The first batch of imported wood arrived in Japan in the mid-1960s.

Japan’s timber imports reached an all-time high of nearly 15 million odmt in 2008, and for a long time thereafter, the average annual total transaction volume of imported timber remained around 12 million odmt. In 2020, affected by the COVID-19, Japan’s timber imports declined significantly.

However, according to the report of Wood Resources Quarterly (WRQ), Japan’s timber imports will increase in 2021 and the first six months of 2022, and the total import volume in 2022 is expected to reach the highest level in three years, among which Japan’s pulp mills are undoubtedly one of the main forces of timber imports.

Of the wood chips imported from Japan, about 85% are broadleaf wood, and the rest are coniferous wood, mainly from the United States and Australia. According to statistics, the import volume of hardwood chips in Japan will be 8.2 million odmt in 2020, and will increase to 9.5 million odmt in 2021. It is estimated that the import volume will also increase slightly in 2022. However, this amount is still lower than the average level of slightly higher than 10 million odmt from 2010 to 2019.

In the first six months of 2022, Vietnam (accounting for 45% of the total imports) is the largest import source of Japanese wood chips, followed by Chile (13%), South Africa (12%) and Australia (11%). In the past 30 years, most of the hardwood chips imported into Japan have come from Australia, Chile and South Africa, because these countries have large areas of high-yield eucalyptus fiber (HYF) fast-growing plantations.

In recent years, as the share of low-quality acacia chips and low-density eucalyptus trees in Southeast Asia (mainly Vietnam, Thailand, Malaysia and Indonesia) began to grow, Vietnam has gradually become a major importer of wood chips to Japan. It is estimated that in 2022, the import of acacia chips and eucalyptus from Southeast Asia will increase to nearly two-thirds of the total import fiber supply of Japanese pulp mills, and the proportion will gradually increase.