The sawmill industry increased at a fast pace throughout the 1900s. The steam sawmill era production record of 1 Million cubic meters in 1876, was fivefold compared with the 1860s – when sawmills got their power from streams and rapids. In four decades (1927) the production figure rose to 7 Million million cubic meters thanks to the emergence of steam sawmills.
The most important export good
Finnish sawmilling industry was a key player even on a global scale. Sweden had been the European top exporter until 1924, until Finland took it over.
The overall export revenues were grown primarily by the sawn goods industry, which was the biggest single export item. This was followed by the products from the chemical woodworking industry, namely pulp and paper, which jointly bypassed sawn timber in export revenue in 1929. The nature and pace of the structural change is highlighted by the fact that sawn timber lost its top spot as the most important single wood industry product to pulp only in 1950.
The era in between the world wars was called in Finland “the republic of forest”, which was largely governed by the sawmilling, pulp and paper bosses – in this order of importance! The change in Finland’s industrial structure started to show only in the 1960s.
© Eero Valio
