State Enterprise "Forests of Ukraine" conducted its first stock auctions for the sale of over 416 thousand cubic meters of timber and signed 6-month contracts at fixed prices, reported CEO Yuriy Bolokhovets.
"The results of the auction: 84% of the offered volume was sold for 932 million UAH! The average price increase was 35%! For a start, this is more than a satisfactory result," he wrote on Facebook.
Bolokhovets specified that "Forests of Ukraine" auctioned round coniferous timber and firewood. The lot sizes ranged from 3 to 12 thousand cubic meters. For the first time, lots were formed by the branches of the Carpathian, Capital, Polissya, Central, and Northern offices. Delivery will be carried out during the first half of 2025 at a fixed price throughout the contract period.
The head of the state enterprise promised that after refining the procedures for quarterly and semi-annual auctions, balancing the market, and increasing the contract execution level to 95%, "Forests of Ukraine" would start practicing the conclusion of annual contracts.
"Ukrainian producers will be able to plan their activities for the year, knowing they are guaranteed a supply of raw materials. It is very important that we achieved this using purely market instruments: without limiting competition, without dividing businesses into more or less privileged ones, and without applying opaque 'manual' resource distribution," he emphasized.
The CEO added that the Ukrainian experience in forming the timber market is ahead of some EU countries and is already being studied in several Eastern European nations.
As reported, forest management reform began in Ukraine in 2016. Within this framework, the sale of unprocessed timber at electronic auctions has already been implemented. Since 2021, an interactive map of timber processing facilities has been operating in test mode in several regions.
A project called "Forest in a Smartphone" has been introduced in the industry, which contains a list of logging tickets for timber harvesting and allows users to verify the legality of logging activities on the ministry's online map.
Since June 1, 2023, Ukraine launched a pilot electronic issuance of logging tickets and certificates of origin for timber. Additionally, State Enterprise "Forests of Ukraine" has started a pilot project for purchasing timber harvesting services through the electronic platform Prozorro.