Forestry investment return in Sweden at 9.2% per annum over the period of 2005-2025, boosted by scarcity of high-quality sawlogs in Europe from 2022 onwards

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 to the return on investment in Finnish private forestry, which was 7.8% per annum during the same period. 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% per annum in Sweden, compared with 6.7% per annum for private forestry in Finland. From 2022 onwards 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 developments 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% in the same period.

Following the discontinuation by the Natural Resources Institute Finland (Luke) of its statistics on investment returns for non-industrial private forests (https://www.luke.fi/en/statistics/forestry-as-an-investment-statistics-discontinued/forestry-as-an-investment-2024), 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 statistics applies 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 from the global international market, which purchases more than 70% of the countries’ forest industry production.

Founded in 1980, Indufor Oy (www.induforgroup.com) is a globally renowned expert in forest and natural resource issues with operations on five continents. The company has served more than one thousand clients and has field experience from more than a hundred countries. The company's headquarters are in Helsinki, Finland, and the company employs more than 60 people.

For further information, please 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