The Turkish forestry industry has witnessed substantial growth during the past five years with exports increasing from $181.4 million in 2004 to $482.2 million in 2008. Turkey’s large forest reserves, improvements in technology and a growing construction and furniture sector have helped boost the industry to a new level. Turkey’s main exports in the sector are fiberboard, particle board, builders’ joinery and carpentry wood, including cellular wood panels, assembled parquet panels, shingles and shakes.
Turkey has about 20.7 million hectares of forest area with a total of 584 tree varieties giving the sector significant advantages over competitors. Of the forest area in Turkey, about half of the forests are productive for business. In the past three years, an annual average of 11 million m3 of industrial wood and 12 million cubic meters of firewood have been produced. Industrial wood production is mainly directed to the manufacturing of logs, wood-based panels, pulpwood and other wood industries.
The Turkish forestry industry has over 29,000 companies manufacturing various products with workshops and industrial-scale manufacturing units each playing an important role. The production of timber and timber products is highly fragmented among a large number of small workshops with large-scale producers producing standard items oriented toward exporting.