Baltic Birch Availability?

[Bryan Hall]

Anyone think we are going to see baltic birch disappear from the shelves with the current Ukraine/Russia war in progress?

[Kurt Wyberanec]

I sure hope not, my business depends on this stuff somewhat. Prices on it have gone absolutely insane in the last year though, for no good reason as far as I'm concerned, with the exception of shipping costs going up way. I was paying $39 a sheet for 1/2" a year ago and now I'm at $92. Now there's inflation and increased logistics, but not that much!!!! One of my suppliers told me that a lot of it comes from Ukraine, but I've understood that the majority is actually Latvia and Lithuania I believe....who knows most of the time the sheets aren't stamped for origin so probably the mill should know. Regardless, couldn't be a bad idea to get a bit extra if you can. I'll bet that yards will hedge and start raising the prices even more even if they didn't buy any more. We'll see, let's just hope the conflict ends quickly obviously lumber prices are a minimal thing compared to senseless loss of life.

[Brian Tymchak]

Interesting thought, but yes I would guess that true Russian BB will be out of stock soon. However, as mentioned, BB also comes from other countries, including Finland.

[Jamie Buxton]

Yeah, Russian Baltic birch will likely disappear. That will make the price of Finnish and Latvian Baltic birch climb. Is Appleply still in business?

[Bryan Hall]

Appleply is still in business, but we get unreliable stock at $250 a sheet...

[Bryan Hall]

Interesting thought, but yes I would guess that true Russian BB will be out of stock soon. However, as mentioned, BB also comes from other countries, including Finland.

Yeah, I've never been able to identify exactly where mine is coming from. It's labeled Russian Birch here, so we'll see what happens with that.

[Andrew Seemann]

I got some in December from stock my vendor had on hand, no 5x5 1/4", only 4x8 (I didn't realize you could get the real thing in 4x8 but apparently you can). They said they they had it on order, but hadn't been able to get it in for a while. Price was up between double and triple from previous year.

Baltic/Russian Birch was already in short supply before this mess broke out. I'm glad I got what I did, but now wish I had gotten more.

[Edwin Santos]

As I understand it, they call it Baltic Birch because the trees used in the plywood come from the Baltic countries of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia. But the manufacturing process occurs in Finland and Russia, probably more in the latter. In my area, the pandemic has tripled my cost of BB. I can't see the global events going on making it any better. Too bad, it was a great deal for a long time. Another case of appreciating something a lot more after it's gone.
My supplier always stocked the standard thicknesses in 5x5 sheets along with the same with a durable clearcoat finish.

[Andrew Seemann]

Actually the "Baltic" in Baltic Birch is a leftover of the Cold War. Back then, suppliers (and consumers) didn't want to emphasize that it was made by Commies, even though everyone knew that most of it came from the Soviet Union. We just pretended it was from Finland despite the Cyrillic stamp

Russian Birch didn't come into common usage until the last decade or two. This is just my guess, but I think it became popular to say "Russian Birch" to indicate that you meant the "good" or "real" stuff vs some of the east Asian or other knockoffs. Or maybe to emphasize you wanted 5x5s.

[John Gornall]

At my supplier last week. Full color label on the 1/2" :

"Russian Birch - Made in Viet Nam"

[steve swantee]

I work in a commercial cabinet shop in Nova Scotia, Canada, we have been unable to buy BB from our suppliers...it is simply not available. We also use "shop grade" birch ply for cabinet bases, that has now become unavailable as well. The Chinese birch ply we tried was horrendous, delaminations, warping, etc. We are currently using another lift of import birch ply, and it seems to be decent stuff, not sure where it was manufactured. Yesterday we received another full lift of birch ply, crated, and heavily strapped with steel...just off the boat. We haven't cracked it open to see what's inside yet, could be garbage, or it could be decent...not sure where this stuff is from, no country of origin on the crate. I think the last time we got baltic it was $200/sheet.

[Maurice Mcmurry]

Has anyone tried Aspen? It is a fairly new addition to the offerings at Liberty Hardwoods. I will look it over on my next trip. Perhaps it could do for some projects (in a pinch).

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There are some previous SMC threads, reading those now...
This is long but interesting https://www.mdpi.com/1455194

[al ladd]

This is pretty grim. I just tried to get prices from Atlantic Plywood here in New England, and they said they're under new ownership, and as I've been buying from them on a COD basis rather than open account for the last 25 years, they wouldn't acknowledge me as a customer, and so wouldn't even quote me prices. But maybe they don't have any plywood I'd want anyway....

Seems like there's an opportunity and need for a renaissance of an American forest products industry, along the lines of Appleply, but with a reliable national supply, and more reasonable pricing. It's not like this country doesn't have trees. Poplar, aspen --fast growing trees made into high quality plywood is even a form of carbon sequestration. Spain does it with Garnica, an interesting product line (if you can find it), a good substitute for BB for many applications. The stuff with the HDF faces is arguably superior to BB and some woodwokers are seeing it as the best substrate for high end veneer work on the market.

[Tom Bender]

Yes we certainly have trees, including Birch and a few others that would make good plywood. I'm thinking that supply and demand will result in an American mill putting out a product of equal quality before too long.

[Dave Fitzgerald]

Unreliable as to availability or product quality?