Chinese Forest Products Industry: Performance Indicators

Driven by technology improvement, the Chinese forest products companies are steadily moving up the value chain from OEMs (original equipment manufacturers) to become OBMs (own-brand manufacturers), and pushed up industry’s productivity and profitability. Average productivity of timber-processing companies more than doubled from CNY 11,800 per person in 2000 to reach CNY 23,700 per person in 2009 (inflation suppressed). During the same period of time, average profitability of timber processing firms jumped by nearly 70% from 2.85% to 4.82%.