Price relationships and market integration in the Swedish wood fuel market

Abstract Cointegration analysis is applied to the prices of three different wood fuel assortments in the Swedish market: refined wood fuels, forest chips and industrial by-products. For the latter two, the price series are separated according to two consumer categories: district heating (DH) plants and industrial consumers. Two types of analyses are performed. The first concerns whether the fuels within each consumer group can be bundled together as belonging to the same market in terms of product homogeneity. The second involves analysis of the prices of homogeneous fuels in the two consumer categories. It is found that in the DH sector, refined wood fuels should be observed as a separate market because their prices do not share a common trend with the prices of any of the other fuels. This lack of a common trend is likely due to the highly internationalized nature of the wood pellet market. The DH prices of forest chips and industrial by-products follow a common trend, as do the prices paid for industrial by-products by DH plants and industrial consumers. The prices of forest chips paid by industrial consumers and DH plants do not share a common trend. The prices paid by industrial consumers for industrial by-products and forest chips also do not share a common trend. These results highlight both the differences between the markets for unrefined and refined wood fuels and the presence of inefficiencies in the Swedish wood fuel market.