This is part one of a series highlighting Forisk’s new Custom Market Forecast. Future posts will highlight how the Custom Market Forecast can help your team make better decisions. To learn more about the Custom Market Forecast, please contact Nick DiLuzio at ndiluzio@forisk.com.

In Fall 2024, Forisk launched the Custom Market Forecast (CMF) for the U.S. South. In early 2025, Forisk expanded the CMF to include market areas for the Pacific Northwest. The CMF provides market-specific analyses and price/cost forecasts of a client’s wood basket(s) or timber market(s). It was developed to better support our Forisk Research Quarterly (FRQ) subscribers. This post highlights some of the most common questions that we receive that the CMF can help answer.

Common Questions Answered by the CMF

• What is the profile of a current market?
  • The CMF provides information on top consumers, supply projections, demand projections, growth-to-drain projections, and price forecasts in a single page dashboard.
• What is the current and future supply availability in a given market?
  • The CMF provides data on current supplies by product as well as forecasts future supply changes by product.
• What is the current and future demand/competition in this market by product?
  • The CMF lists the top five grade and pulp consumers in a market as well as forecasts demand by product under different scenarios.
• How does this market compare to others in the region? What is the competitive profile of this market?
  • The CMF can be a time- and cost-effective way to compare multiple markets in a region.
• What is the impact of a supply or demand disruption event on the market?
  • The CMF can be used to assess the impacts of a weather event (i.e. Hurricane Helene) or a mill closure/opening on supply and demand in a market.
• What are the implications of the broader economy on supply, demand, and price in your local market?
  • The price forecast scenarios utilized in the CMF consider the overall housing market and other macro-economic indicators.
• How will prices in a market react to different scenarios or risk profiles?
  • The Strategic CMF (an offering for projects requiring a greater degree of customization) offers enhanced or non-standard deliverables for boards, investors, financiers, and executives. The Strategic CMF serves requests related to comparing markets, ranking markets, screening markets for due diligence, portfolio analysis or tracking, and strategic planning.

 

The CMF also helps answer a range of operational, A&D, and sustainability questions for small and large organizations. Stay tuned for Part II, which will take a closer look at the importance of understanding your localized market.