Investment in Swedish forestry generated an average annual return of 9.2% during 2005-2025. The investment return in Sweden for the period can be compared with the return on investment in Finnish private forestry, which was 7.8% p.a. Indufor research allows for the first time a precise comparison of the investment economics of forestry in Sweden.
For the period 2005-2022 preceding Russia’s full-scale attack against Ukraine, forestry returned 6.2% p.a. in Sweden, compared with 6.7% p.a. for private forestry in Finland. From 2022 onward, up to 2025, investment returns in Sweden have been boosted in particular by a rapid increase in wood prices, especially by the level-up of Swedish sawlog prices, which have been driven by scarcity of high-quality construction wood in Central Europe.
Notably, the return on Swedish forestry seems to be, for the time being, converging to its long-term average. Coinciding with the roundwood market development in Finland, pulpwood and sawlog wood prices in Sweden contracted sharply in the third quarter of 2025, immediately reducing the return on forestry investment. The year-to-date return on forestry investment in Sweden stood at 0.8% in the first quarter of 2026, whereas the Finnish market returned -1.2% during the same period.
Following the discontinuation by the Natural Resources Institute Finland (Luke) of its statistics on investment returns for non-industrial private forests, Indufor Data and Technology Oy (Indufor) continues the publication of the Forestry Investment Return Index. Applying the method initially introduced by Luke, Indufor has expanded the statistics to also cover Sweden based on SLU (slu.se), Skogsstyrelsen (skogsstyrelsen.se) and Indufor data. The method is based on the Montgomery–Vartia index, which allows the return to be consistently divided into components. Indufor’s statistics apply to weekly, monthly and quarterly data, enabling more accurate measurement.
In Sweden, the statistics cover more than 300 000 forest owners with a total of 23.5 million ha of productive forest land. In Finland, the statistics concern about 600 000 private forest owners with a total forest area of 12.4 million ha. As Swedish and Finnish forests together account for about one third of the EU’s timber market, the yield calculation can be considered indicative at a broader scale. In addition, the index provides information on the global international market, which purchases more than 70% of the countries’ forest industry production.
For further info, contact:
Topi Pohjankoski, Indufor Data & Technology, +358 45 2670894, topi.pohjankoski@induforgroup.com
Elias Pekari, Indufor Data & Technology, elias.pekari@induforgroup.com
Jarno Seppälä, Managing Director, +358 40 551 5343, jarno.seppala@induforgroup.com
