Third-party quality control and training are essential to ensure graders in the Baltics and potentially elsewhere are qualified and maintain standards. With little or much less opportunity for third party inspectors to be visiting overseas mills in the last two years it is perhaps not surprising quality standards have fallen but this does not make it in any way acceptable.

Combine this with the unprecedented demand we saw in 2020/2021 and buyers unfortunately had little opportunity or incentive to complain if quality standards fell. We are now seeing the consequences with the move back to a Buyers’ market, increasing the opportunity to lodge complaints and questioning quality in different ways.