Birch plywood supply to DMK Forest Products cut
The war in Ukraine has affected the supply of birch plywood to local plywood supplier DMK Forest Products.
The Brookvale-based business has been importing high-quality WISA birch plywood to Australia for over 40 years from Finnish company UPM Plywood. The Scandinavian country is located across the Gulf of Finland from Russia, and UPM operated the Chudovo plywood mill near Russia’s sea border. In March this year, UPM announced it had closed its Russian operations due to the country’s war on the Ukraine.
Chief executive officer Steve Maxwell told Peninsula Living that since the war on Ukraine started in February 2022, UPM’s plywood supply had started diminishing. DMK has replaced WISA with good quality stock from Vietnam and China. All plywood was safely harvested and DMK was a proud member of organisations like Responsible Wood and the PEFC to ensure renewable, sustainable wood is used in its products.
Mr Maxwell expressed his concern for the 800 workers in Russia who had lost their jobs. “(The workers) are not involved in this war. They’re just very poor family people who live there and it’s hurt their income,” he said. “Those people (were) still going into the factories, repainting all the machinery and sweeping the dust because they could not make anything.”
UPM said it had been providing humanitarian support to the Ukraine and employees in affected areas. Mr Maxwell said that prior to the war in Ukraine, UPM was the world’s biggest plywood manufacturing company in the world. In terms of sustainability, Finland has a large forest industry, and plants three trees for every one which is pulled out.
The Narrabeen local recalled how DMK’s decade’s old relationship with UPM Plywood started. Mr Maxwell senior, who started DMK, had met the UPM ‘big boss’ in a bar in Hong Kong. “I wouldn’t know if it’s even there anymore! We just continued the association forever.”