Wood-based textile fibre market as part of the global forest-based bioeconomy

Abstract

Wood-based cellulose fibres for textiles, hygiene and health products have been in the market for long time, but competition with other materials has kept their market share modest. The shortage of land for the expansion of cotton production, environmental concerns related to cotton and the oil-based textile materials, changes in fashion, and new technologies for extracting fibres from wood are changing the market setting in the favour of wood-based fibres. The increase in global population and welfare drives the growth of demand for textiles. If the demand for wood-based textile pulps would grow in the same pace as earlier in this century, their annual production would be 15 Mt higher in 2035 than in 2018. Growing at the pace of the global GDP in selected illustrative Shared Socioeconomic Pathway projections, the respective increase would range from 6 to 11 Mt/yr. The demand scenarios were assessed with a global forest sector model integrating the textile fibre market to the rest of the forest sector. The demand for wood-based textile fibres can largely be covered by converting paper pulp mills to textile pulps but also investments into new mills are projected. This will reduce the supply of other forest products made of pulpwood and chips and possibly give a small increase in the supply volumes of industries producing chips as by-products (sawnwood, plywood). Due to increasing roundwood harvests and wood prices, the investors should factor in an increase in input prices when making their decisions.