Identification of Timber Industry Clusters in the Regions of Ukraine
Authors:   Research Centre for Industrial Problems of Development of NAS of Ukraine, Hubarieva Iryna O. , Kolbasin Yevhen S. ,   Research Centre for Industrial Problems of Development of NAS of Ukraine, Filatova Tetyana A. ,   Research Centre for Industrial Problems of Development of NAS of Ukraine, Yudenko Yevhen V. ,   Research Centre for Industrial Problems of Development of NAS of Ukraine, Perepelitsyn Hryhorii B. ,   Research Centre for Industrial Problems of Development of NAS of Ukraine
Published: January 2025

The timber industry complex, as a promising export-oriented segment of the Ukrainian economy, has a fairly significant potential, which is not inferior to most developed European countries. At present, combining immense number of types of economic activity, it is considered promising not only in terms of intensifying export opportunities for domestic industrialists, in particular manufacturers of furniture of a wide range, but also in terms of increasing the growth rate of the domestic market. The key reasons hindering the development of the timber industry of Ukraine are the following: low interconnection of forestry and timber processing industry; low technological level; weak innovation activity; low efficiency of forest resources use; high level of corruption. The article aims at developing theoretical and methodological support for the identification of clusters of the timber industry complex of Ukraine. The sequence of identification of existing and prospective clusters of the timber industry complex in the regions of Ukraine includes several stages. At the first stage, the scale and significance of the timber industry of the country’s regions is assessed, followed by their positioning in the matrix in the plane of the corresponding coordinates. According to the second stage, an assessment of the volume of timber export and forest cover of the territories of the regions of Ukraine is carried out, followed by their positioning in the matrix in the coordinates «volume of timber export – forest cover of the territory». It is found that a number of regions with an average level of timber exported in the pre-war period, including Chernivtsi, Vinnytsia, Sumy, Kharkiv, Khmelnytskyi, Cherkasy and Luhansk regions, as well as territories with a high level of forest cover – Zakarpattia and Ivano-Frankivsk regions, looked promising in the development of their own timber industry. The third stage involves assessing the ratio of exports of manufacturing economic activities of the region’s timber industry to the volume of exports of the region and the country, followed by positioning in the matrix in the plane of «the ratio of exports of manufacturing products of the timber industry of the region to the volume of exports of the region and the country as a whole». At the fourth stage, the identification of existing and prospective clusters of timber industry in the regions of the country is carried out and the directions of their development are determined. According to the generalized characterization of all components of the timber industry of the regions of Ukraine, as the most promising are identified the cluster structures that actually operate or can be created in almost all regions of the Carpathians and Polissia. Kyiv region also has a high potential. The average level of potential in the development of timber industry can be noted in Vinnytsia, Cherkasy and Chernivtsi regions of Ukraine. It is found that the priority areas of development of existing and prospective clusters in the relevant regions of Ukraine in the post-war period are such types of economic activity of the manufacturing industry of the timber industry as wood processing and production of wood and cork products; production of paper and paper products; printing activity; furniture production.