Today, with an area of 420,000 hectares, France is the top European producer of Douglas Fir.
The Douglas Fir can be found throughout the country, with more than 80% of the resource concentrated in the mid-mountain areas of the Massif Central. The rest of France (Normandy, Brittany, the Central region and North-East mainly) together account for around 100,000 ha of plantings, indicating the species’ high degree of flexibility. This relatively young afforestation area (average age class of between 35 and 45 years) stores a volume of standing timber of 115 million m³, the biological growth of which is estimated at 6 million m³ per year, or an average productivity of 15 m³ per hectare per year.
Since the early 1990s, production of French Douglas Fir has been constantly growing.
Indeed, the harvest has increased by a factor of 2.5 over 20 years. Production of sawn Douglas Fir has seen the same growth, thus demonstrating the ability of French industry to adapt. This adoption bodes well for the growth of the Douglas Fir sector. In coming decades, this national resource is indeed likely to show strong growth. The results of the study commissioned in 2012 by France Douglas from the Institut Technologique Forêt Cellulose Bois Construction (FCBA - Technological Institute of Forestry, Cellulose and Wood Construction) suggest harvests of over 6 million m³ of roundwood from 2030. The prospects for production of lumber is on the order of 2.5 million m³ per year, compared to 845,000 m³ in 2015. Douglas Fir will represent one third of the national production of conifer lumber.
Douglas Fir can mainly be found in the centre of France.
Douglas Fir may represent one-third of the national production of conifer lumber by 2040 – Source: FCBA resource study for France Douglas.
