Italian sawmills have pushed domestic sawn softwood production back toward one million cubic metres a year, a recovery mounted within a market that consumed 5.45 million cubic metres in 2024 and imported most of it. That is according to data from the European Organisation of the Sawmill Industry’s 2025-26 Annual Report, which cites that Federazione Filiera Legno convened the Stati Generali della Foresta-Legno in Bologna on 9 July.
“An essential step in building a genuine National Wood Product System,” Angelo Luigi Marchetti, the Federazione Filiera Legno president, said of Professionisti Legno, the professional trades association launched at the assembly. Marchetti told delegates the challenge reaches beyond any one forest or company, and he wants an industrial policy that treats raw material supply, forest management, industrial innovation, timber construction, logistics and packaging as a single interconnected production ecosystem.
Import dependence remains the hard number in the federation’s case, with Italy buying 1.47 million cubic metres of roundwood from abroad in 2024 as sawn softwood consumption held at 5.45 million cubic metres. The rebound comes as Italian mills work through a perfect storm of near-zero margins, squeezing the country’s sawmilling sector.
Broadleaf production is forecast at 340,000 cubic metres for 2025, carried by supply chains built around the chestnut, a species that anchored the economy of Italy’s mountains and hills for centuries. Packaging keeps timber central to the country’s logistics, with Italian operators handling 160 million pallets a year and producing more than 84 million units, whilst timber construction turnover passed €2.3 billion, according to the federation’s 2025 Wood Construction Observatory figures.
Continental numbers give the Italian push its scale, with the EOS report counting European forests at 232 million hectares, 35.4 per cent of the continent’s land, after 35 years in which cover expanded by more than 23 million hectares. Standing stock has reached 38.3 billion cubic metres, an increase of 45 per cent compared with 1990.
Europe’s sawmill industry spans 32,000 companies, 220,000 employees, and €51.4 billion in annual turnover, cutting 102 million cubic metres of sawnwood in 2024, with more than 90 per cent of its logs sourced within the EU. Sawn softwood output across EOS countries still slipped 1.5 per cent in 2025 and is expected to contract again in 2026, the same squeeze that this month pushed Stora Enso to halt its Veitsiluoto sawmill in northern Finland from August.
“Making a system means pooling vision, skills and planning capacity,” said Valentino Valentini, Italy’s Deputy Minister for Enterprises and Made in Italy, who counts the sector’s specialist skills among the distinctive elements of the national brand. Professionisti Legno was constituted under Law 4/2013, with contributions from PEFC Italia, UNCEM and Consorzio LegnoLegno, and brings together exhibition fitters, packers, carpenters, structural timber graders and ecodesign technicians as the first national professional association for Italy’s timber trades.
Wood Central understands the forest figures in the EOS report come from FOREST EUROPE’s State of Europe’s Forests 2025, which found that growing stock is still climbing, with annual growth consistently exceeding harvest levels. The Bologna assembly follows the Foreste in Comune survey, which mapped Italian woodland overtaking farmland for the first time since the Middle Ages, even as the country remained among Europe’s three largest timber importers.
Marchetti wants a national wood product system measured across the full life cycle, and the gap it must close is precise: Italian mills cut nearly one million cubic metres into a market consuming 5.45 million.
