Only 6 countries in Europe produce more wooden houses than Estonia
Estonia is still the biggest producer of wooden houses in Europe regarding export volume, goal of the sector however is to outperform the main competitors also in production volume in the future.
Chairman of the Board of Estonian Wooden Houses Association, Sven Mats, confirms that the sector set a new goal last year: “If a plan of making it into the 5 richest countries was perhaps a little bit too ambitious, then the wish of Estonian wooden houses sector to belong amongst Europe’ s top five wooden houses producers is very realistic.”
Hard to catch the biggest producers
Analyzing the capability of manufacturing sector and strength of economy of Germany, England and Sweden, it is not realistic, considering how small Estonia is, to compete with those countries. Wooden houses production in those fore-mentioned countries is respectively 1,8 billion, 1,4 billion and 1,3 billion euros per year.
“We have taken one step by today towards fulfilling our goal,” says Mats and states that Estonian wooden houses sector passed Norway by total production volume last year. “If today’ s strong growth continues, it is realistic that we are in future able to exceed countries such as Finland, Austria and Italy, who today come before us. Their production volumes are in the range of 341 to 652 million euros per year,” reveals Mats about the short-term goals and closest competitors.
Still Europe’ s biggest exporter
According to Eurostat, Estonia’ s wooden houses export increased by 20,2% in 2015, growing from 238 million euros in 2014 to 286 million euros in 2015. Estonian wooden houses Cluster Manager Lauri Kivil brings forth that among 10 biggest wooden houses exporters only three countries – Estonia, Lithuania and Poland – were able to increase export.
Strong growth of Lithuanian and Polish wooden houses producers has also been felt by the Estonian producers. “Our main markets have little procurements where our producers do not have to compete with producers from those countries,” Kivil describes the situation.
The volume of total production in Europe’ s wooden houses industry was 7,74 billion euros in 2015. The total volume of Estonian wooden houses sector according to Eurostat was 318 million euros in 2015, which makes up 4,1% of Europe’ s total volume. Export volume of Estonian wooden houses sector was 286 million euros in 2015.