Timber importers in the Gulf took a third less softwood lumber in the first half of the year, as the war with Iran left the Strait of Hormuz all but closed to container ships. That is according to Gerd Ebner of Holzkurier, the Austrian timber journal, whose survey, released last week, found the region’s market fell by 500,000 cubic metres to 1.06 million, with Brazil its largest supplier and Austria second.
“With the military escalation in the Persian Gulf, however, demand has collapsed, and at the same time freight costs have risen massively,” said Franz Teuschler, chairman of Austria’s timber traders, earlier this month. Teuschler said exports had a “very pleasing” 2025, with growth strongest in Austria’s traditional European markets, and he now expects lower sales and margins across 2026.
“The hostilities in Iran and the associated de-facto closure of the Strait of Hormuz for (container) ships are having a major impact,” wrote Ebner, who found Germany “loses little” in the region. Qatar, Bahrain, and Kuwait have no coast beyond the strait, unlike the United Arab Emirates, whose ports at Khor Fakkan and Fujairah face the Gulf of Oman.
Finland lost the most ground, with its exporters shipping 146,400 cubic metres of sawn softwood into the Gulf in the first half, down from 244,700, according to UN Comtrade data. Shipments into Kuwait fell 81 per cent to 23,600 cubic metres, from 124,300 a year earlier, a steeper fall than in Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, or Oman.
Brazil overtook Finland as the Gulf’s biggest supplier of sawn softwood in the first half of 2026, even as its own shipments fell 11 per cent. Deliveries into the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Oman, and Kuwait fell to 1.06 million cubic metres from 1.58 million, in line with Holzkurier’s count. Austria, which Holzkurier ranks second, records no such shipments under its own name. (Graphic: Wood Central, from UN Comtrade data; backdrop © Dreamstime.com (ID 220736519)
Marine analytics firm Kpler counted 11 vessels crossing the strait at the start of this month, whilst the United States claimed 40 had made the passage that day. The Joint Maritime Information Center, which monitors threats to shipping in the region, held the strait’s risk level at severe in an advisory the same day.
It comes after a Doha supplier’s 17 containers of Austrian spruce were diverted to Khor Fakkan and trucked overland to Abu Dhabi, a detour that added US$3,600 a container. Some carriers were quoting $5,000 by April, the supplier said, with the per-piece price of a standard 2×4 framing beam in Qatar up 52 per cent since the closure.
An illustration of cargo ships converging on the Strait of Hormuz between Bandar Abbas and Dubai. A Doha supplier’s Austrian spruce, due at Dubai’s Jebel Ali port inside the strait, was diverted to Khor Fakkan on the Gulf of Oman instead. (Image Credit: © Dreamstime.com (ID 450552733))
Gulf governments moved to ease the pressure, with Saudi Arabia announcing shared storage zones at King Abdulaziz Port in Dammam and Dubai opening what it called a green corridor with Oman. Transport executives called both measures imperfect at the time and expected deliveries into Dubai and other Gulf capitals to stay slower and more expensive.
“Cargoes that were already at sea had to be diverted, and negotiations were interrupted,” said Gustavo Milazzo, chief executive of WoodFlow, which tracks Brazil’s wood product exports. Pine sawnwood is Brazil’s main export to the Middle East, Milazzo said in April, with Saudi Arabia cutting its purchases from $6.7 million in January to $2.7 million in March.
Purchases by the United Arab Emirates fell from $6.5 million to $1 million over the same months, a fall Milazzo blamed on the war. WoodFlow, which builds its figures from Brazil’s official export data, found trade with the Persian Gulf states fell by as much as 80 per cent between January and March.
A sawyer works a plantation log through a bandsaw headrig at a mill in São Paulo state. Brazil’s share of the Gulf’s softwood lumber imports rose from 15 to 19 per cent in the first half of 2026, even as its shipments fell 11 per cent. (Photo Credit: Alf Ribeiro via Dreamstime)
Whilst the Gulf’s intake fell, Egypt’s importers took 495,400 cubic metres of lumber from all suppliers in June, 89 per cent more than a year earlier. Egypt takes its cargo through ports on the Mediterranean and the Red Sea, so its lumber from Europe never has to pass through the Strait of Hormuz.
More broadly, European Union exporters shipped more than 750,000 cubic metres of lumber to the wider Middle East and North African region in July, down 0.8 per cent year on year, according to provisional Eurostat data. IMF PortWatch recorded an average of 18.2 ships a day crossing the strait over the first 19 days of that month, down from 103.9 a year earlier.
“If the necessary conditions are met, the strait can be reopened, and normal maritime passage restored within seven days,” Iran’s foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, said on Friday. US President Donald Trump rejected the plan on Saturday, telling reporters outside the White House that the deal “would not be acceptable.”
Iran had relayed the plan to Washington through Qatar and offered to reopen the strait if the United States met conditions that included lifting its naval blockade of Iranian ports. Araghchi said no rejection had come through official channels, with Iran still waiting for a definitive response from the mediators.
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