Prices for overseas traded softwood wood chips have fallen 11% in eight months, while hardwood chip prices have increased slightly, according to the latest FOEX Chip Price Indexes.

Major wood products production showed steady growth worldwide in 2013, the fourth consecutive year of increase, says new data from the United Nation's Food and Agriculture Organization, driven by wood pellet biofuel and production of industrial roundwood, sawnwood, and wood-based panels.

Global production of all major wood products continued to show steady growth in 2013 for the fourth consecutive year, according to new data published by Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations.

The company announced earnings of $118 million on sales of $833 million in the fourth quarter of 2013, and $349 million on sales of $3,47 billion for the entire year 2013.

That wood can burn is obvious. But it is still not common knowledge that its combustibility makes wood handling processes some of the most hazardous in any industry from an explosion standpoint.

Wood chip and pulplog prices fell in many regions of the world the 2Q/13 with the biggest declines occuring in Japan, Brazil and Spain, reports the Wood Resource Quarterly. Lower fiber costs and higher pulp prices have increased profitability for many pulp mills during the first half of 2013.

Activated charcoal from wood chips, saw dust and other biomass can be powderized and used to filter mercury out of exhaust from coal-fired boilers, says enviraPAC, giving old power plants a new lease on life.

Increased reliance on domestic Eucalyptus fiber by Spanish pulp mills has resulted in a dramatic reduction in wood chip shipments from Uruguay, reports the Wood Resource Quarterly.

In late 2011, Brazil and Chile sent the first chip vessels to pulp mills in China in over five years. In the past, Japan had been the major destination for Latin American Eucalyptus chips. With Japanese pulp mills paying considerably more than Chinese pulp mills for chips, it is likely that a majority of Eucalyptus chips from Latin America will continue to be shipped to Japan.