Remember that geographically, Chile is in fact a long valley stretching out over more than 4,000 kilometres between the Cordillera of the Andes to the east and the Cordillera del Mar to the west

The average width of the country is 190 km. Thanks to a huge range of latitudes, Chile can offer a broad-based bio-diversity.

But don't get it wrong, if we forget about the arid desert areas of the north, the Chilean climate is of the oceanic type, being cold and humid with high rainfall, as at Puerto Monte (with 200 mm a year).

So there is no doubt about the fact that we are going to find temperate hardwood species.

Forest covers 44.7 % of the country, that is 33.8 million hectares of which just 12 million are plantation forests (Pins Radiata, Douglas fir and Eucalyptus), leaving some 22 million hectares of so-called "native" forest.

Private forests are preponderant in terms of surface area.

While, as with conifers, they are not necessarily owned by the sawmills, more and more investors are betting on productive management of varieties like Ulmo (Eucryphia Cordifolia), Roble (Nothofagus Obliqua) or Coigue (Nothofagus Dombeyi).

In addition to these main, widely distributed species, we can add Lenga (Nothofagus Pumilio) found solely in Patagonia from Coihaique to Cape Horn.

Finally, and to round things off, other rarer varieties like Rauli, Tepa and Eucalyptus (Vinimalis and Globulus) are also present in Chile.

We have seen tat most of these forests have never been exploited for commercial or industrial purposes (1.5 million m3 of hardwood felled a year). Moreover, the timber industry is almost inexistent as far as hardwoods are concerned. However, we should note the presence of a few works involved in rotary cutting of Ulmo / Tepa or slicing Coigue successfully for interior decorating.

Sawing Lenga is fairly well developed and a few units work with Ulmo and Roble.

Some major papermaking groups are also present in Chile and consume a considerable percentage of the deciduous trees felled.

In these conditions, the share of exported logs is relatively high. Coigue, Roble and Rauli each represent nearly a third of the 20,000 m3 of roundwood exported yearly.

For sawn timber, out of the 40,000 m3 exported each year, nearly 30,000 concern Lenga, with the remainder being shared between Ulmo, Rauli and Roble .

To sum up, close examination of the country tells us that Chile has the advantage of an abundant hardwood resource in varieties close in nature to European and North American deciduous trees, that has hitherto been badly organised, and that the deciduous wood activity has been unable to assume its true role on the international markets.

Through its Santiago offices, the J.Lalanne Company is available to you to provide information and advise and, if you are interested, offer the varieties mentioned above.