Wood consumption statistics renewed – same content, new look

Natural Resources Institute Finland (Luke) has given its wood consumption statistics a new look. The six sets of statistics are merged into one under the title “Wood consumption”. The merged statistics are “Total wood consumption”, “Forest industries’ wood consumption”, “Small sawmills”, “Wood pellets”, “Wood in energy generation”, and “Fuelwood consumption in small-scale housing”. How will the renewal affect the users of the statistics?

Wood consumption is one Luke’s key statistical areas. The statistics describe how wood as a raw material is distributed to different uses, the forest industry and energy generation.

Aiming at clearer statistics

"The set of statistics includes several sub-areas of wood consumption that together describe the total consumption of solid wood in Finland. Previously, Luke produced separate statistics for each sub-area, which made understanding the overall situation difficult. Due to this, we discussed how the set of statistics could be made more user friendly. We aimed at clarity and understandability", says Tuomas Niinistö, senior statistician at Luke.

No changes to content

The new Wood consumption statistics has all the same information as before, and users can still access the same sets of statistics on Luke’s website. The most visible change to users is that statistical publications on subjects related to wood consumption will be collected under the same title, which makes it easier to find the information. Data on the different sub-areas are still published with the same annual schedule, and older publications can also be found under the “Wood consumption” title. 

The names of the wood consumption sub-areas were not changed. However, the title of the set of statistics was changed: “Total wood consumption” is now “Wood consumption”. The quality reports for the statistics describe how they are made, their classifications, and the other metadata required to understand them. Previous sub-area-specific reports are replaced with a single report that covers the entire set of statistics.

All statistical data produced by Luke are freely accessible in our statistical database. The changes to the “Wood consumption” statistics were also updated to the database. The contents of all six sub-areas can be found under the “Wood consumption” title in the “Economy” section of forest statistics. In addition, some individual database tables were merged, which means some older time series were combined with newer data.

Renewal work continues

We hope that data users are satisfied with the changes we have made and that the wood consumption statistics are now more clearly accessible to all data users. In the future, we will also review the scopes of the different sub-areas and discuss whether the structure of the content could be further developed – while of course taking into consideration the requests and feedback received from data users.