> It’s difficult to ship lumber overseas cost effectively: lumber is (or was) one of the least expensive materials on the planet. At $300 per 1000 board feet (the average price over the last 25 years), a 20 foot shipping container holds just $4500 worth of material. The cost of transporting a container across the ocean is $1700 dollars or more.
Shipping is so expensive, if you start shipping wood instead of sourcing it locally, then no wonder the price is going to go up even faster.
What should have been a good alternative here, is to prevent/taxe massively exports of wood from EU to NA. Prices would have stagnated near a peak in NA and we would have kept our wood supply at a moderated price, here.
On the contrary, wood is shipped from the US to Europe for energy. This is Long Leaf Pine, one of the species commonly used for framing homes in the US.
