Prices of raw-wood assortments in selected markets of central Europe and their development in the future

The aim of the paper is to evaluate the price development of timber assortments in selected countries in Central Europe, to compare the prices and identify the factors influencing the prices, and to quantify the extent of their impact on the prices. A further aim is to predict the price development based on comparing various models for predicting time series of prices. The analyses of the price development was carried out for the assortments of spruce, fir, and beech sawlogs in Slovakia, Czech Republic, and selected Austrian provinces. The analyzed period covered the years from 2001 to 2017 per individual months. Following the selected factors, the study was focused on the timber price development, and subsequently the prediction up to the end of 2019 was calculated. The most significant factor having a negative impact on the price development was the global economic crisis. Following all the prediction methods, the next two years can expect an increase in the prices of sawlogs, except the beech sawlogs in Austria. Analysis of the price developments in the selected countries confirmed that all global factors reflected the price level trends approximately equally in all countries.