Shipping marks indicate the origin and properties of the sawn timber

Metsä Fibre’s spruce and pine sawn timber is available in a selection of grades that can be easily identified by their shipping marks. The shipping marks stamped on the ends of sawn timber in red or green tell the recipient who the timber producer is as well as the type and grade of the sawn timber.

Sawn timber is classified into various grades based on its technical and visual properties. The technical properties include the dimensions, moisture content and warping of the sawn timber. The visual properties include the location, size, number, quality and composition of knots and warps. At Metsä Fibre, we use the Nordic timber commercial grading rules for both our pine (Pinus sylvestris) and spruce (Picea abies) sawn timber.

The US grades (US standing for unsorted) that are the highest contain the grades US I – IV. Most of Metsä Fibre’s spruce sawn timber, which is of consistent quality, falls under the US I – IV grades.

The shipping marks, which were all sawmill-specific, have been replaced with the new brand image. This has led to a new design based on the Metsä logo and a mark indicating the timber’s grade. For spruce sawn timber, the logo’s base colour is green, and for pine sawn timber, it is red.