Importers see improved conditions

The market for exotics has benefited from lowered shipping costs that skyrocketed at the height of the pandemic, according to importers and vendors who spoke to Woodshop News.

However, this broad category of material that covers mainly tropical hardwoods is not where it was pre-pandemic. Availability, higher costs and harvesting regulations have impacted sales.

“During the pandemic, our shipping costs were quadruple, but the majority of it has gone back to pre-pandemic,” says Rocky Mehta of West Penn Hardwoods in Conover, N.C. “For example, a shipment that used to be $2,300 from Brazil went up to $12,600. Now it’s come back to about $3,200.

“Also, some of the exotic prices are starting to normalize. The thing is, in some industries, prices have gone up and are not coming back down, and that’s happening with exotic woods. Exotics have been getting tougher because so many species all over the world are subjected to CITES which raises the price. So, while the supply chain has improved, shipping cost has improved, pricing has not improved.”

“Covid definitely did quite a number on the shipping costs, and we’ve seen that start to come down,” says Luke Zale of Rare Woods U.S.A in Mexico, Maine, which carries about a dozen exotics in an inventory of 130 species.

“I know a couple years ago when I imported a container from Brazil to the New York port, then up to us, it was somewhere around $10,000. This past summer we imported from Germany, and it only cost us around $2,000 to get it over here.”

Zale is seeing demand for live edge slabs.

“I think that’s an area that’s really kind of starting to grow and they’re kind of difficult to get. A lot of tropical mills don’t want to mill them up, but we have seen an uptick in it. We haven’t done a lot of live edge ourselves, but we did import a whole bunch of purple heart slabs that did pretty well,” says Zale.

“It’s mostly sapele, Spanish cedar, mahogany and Accoya, and I don’t see anything slowing down,” says Steve Tagliamonte, regional sales rep for Rex Lumber Co.’s New Jersey yard. “I cover a lot of coastal areas and the mid-Atlantic and haven’t seen much slowdown there.

“Sales have been good. They’re steady. Last year was an unbelievable year, this year’s been good.”

This article was originally published in the January 2024 issue.