Mozambique Quadruples Processed Timber Exports on Veneer Sales
Exporters shipped 62 per cent less furniture in the first half, the finished product Mozambique's agriculture minister wants the country selling abroad instead of boards.
A buyer for a Chinese trading company inspects hardwood logs as a loader works a yard on Mozambique's Beira corridor. Mozambique's government wants the country to stop exporting semi-processed timber and ship furniture, doors, windows, and parquet instead. (Photo Credit: Alamy Stock Photo, image EEEXT0)
Veneer has overtaken sawn boards as Mozambique’s biggest processed timber export, with the country’s exporters shipping 22,460 cubic metres in the first half of the year, after selling none in the same period in 2025. That is according to figures from Mozambique’s government reported on Monday, which found processed timber exports rose 311 per cent to 24,648 cubic metres, up from 5,995 cubic metres a year earlier.
“We cannot continue to export planks, boards and semi-processed products. This is exporting potential, exporting jobs, exporting wealth that should stay in the country,” Roberto Albino said in April, as Mozambique’s Minister of Agriculture, Environment and Fisheries launched this year’s harvesting season in Sofala province. Albino said the government wants Mozambique to export furniture, doors, windows, and parquet instead, as part of a strategy to turn the forest sector into an industrial base.
By contrast, furniture exports fell 62 per cent to 128 cubic metres over the six months, whilst sawn board exports dropped 80 per cent to 1,119 cubic metres. Plywood exports climbed to 683 cubic metres after none were recorded in the same months of 2025, the government said.
China, Mauritius, Vietnam, and South Africa were the main export markets in the first half, with native hardwoods and exotic plantation species both counted in the figures. Most of Mozambique’s timber exports have long been handled by Chinese companies, with China the country’s dominant buyer.
Hand-painted origin and species codes on hardwood log ends at a Chinese-owned timber depot in Nampula, northern Mozambique. Imede Falume, the country’s national director of forests, said in April that a digital system will track every tree felled from its origin to its final destination. (Photo Credit: Alamy Stock Photo, image BY23FX)
It comes as the Mozambican Federation of Timber Operators (Fedemoma) launched a ten-year strategic plan in Maputo in April, with a training centre planned in each of the country’s three regions. The federation, which drew up the plan with the International Labour Organization, says industrialisation will cut exports of raw timber and add value at home.
“The goal is to equip operators with technical knowledge for the production of furniture, doors, windows and other high value-added products,” said Jorge Chacate, Fedemoma’s president. He wants to “break the cycle of exporting raw material”, with Mozambican timber processed and consumed in products made at home.
Last year, operators also asked the government to set reference prices for forest products, arguing that the current model left producers dependent on international buyers’ prices. The federation says the many inspection posts on national roads add further costs for operators trucking timber from the centre and north to the main export ports.
“Five years ago we had more than 800 registered operators and currently, around 400,” Imede Falume said at the same launch, with Mozambique’s national director of forests naming illegal harvesting among the challenges facing the sector.
Falume said the government revised the Forest Law in 2023 and approved its regulations a year later, before announcing a digital system to track the country’s timber. “Every tree felled will be tracked from its origin to its final destination,” he said.
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