KUALA LUMPUR: The Malaysian Timber Council has a new plan for increasing the Malaysian timber and timber products exports to China.
Datuk Seri Wee Jeck Seng, MTC chairman, explained that it will be a very difficult thing to do, as the competitiveness there is hard to penetrate. The Malaysian timber and timber products exports to China are at a low key at the moment. Yet, as China is expected to meet its growing timber demand in 2016, these exports might increase, as reported by The Sun Daily.
“China has a big population and many tiered markets. Starting from last year, we’ve been working on having more business-matching sessions and using new approaches through portals to penetrate the market,” he added.
Moreover, according to The Sun Daily, MTC plans to open a regional office in India by the end of this year, as the country is another potential market for the Malaysian timber industry given its expanding middle class, increasing per capita income, rapid urbanisation and growth of the real estate sector. There will be growing demand for value-added downstream products such as furniture, doors and flooring products.
MTC also has three other regional offices in Guangzhou, Dubai and London. These regional officeshave to look for business opportunities and new markets to improve the exports. Japan, the US, India, Singapore, Australia, Korea, Taiwan, China, the UK and Thailand are the top 10 export markets for Malaysian timber and timber products.
The National Timber Industry Policy, launched in 2009, set up a target as to achieve exports of wood and wood products worth EUR 11,43 billion by 2020 and EUR 3,45 billion of export value for the furniture industry with value-added achievement of at least 60% to reach the premium level, as reported by The Sun Daily.
The largest item in Malaysia’s export of timber products in 2015 was wooden furniture, whose value rose by 14.5% y-o-y to EUR 1,57 billion. The largest furniture export district in Malaysia is Muar, which accounts for 50% of the furniture exports in the country.
“If we achieve 12% growth every year , we can achieve EUR 3,45 billion in furniture export value by 2020,” said Wee. During the first half of 2016, the exports of timber products from Malaysia rose up to EUR 2,35 billion. Wooden furniture accounted for EUR 78 million, followed by plywood (EUR 48 million) and sawn timber (EUR 35 million).
The biggest competitors for Malaysia are currently China, Vietnam, Indonesia, Brazil and some African countries.
