The price of Baltic forestland has grown sevenfold over the last 25 years, rising from 500 Euros per hectare to 3,700 Euros per hectare in 2025. And that increase is fuelled by speculation from Swedish forest companies, which now draws up to 40% of timber supplies from the Baltics.
That is according to Erik Backman, a Forest and Agriculture Specialist for Danske Bank. In his latest forest report, Backman reported that Latvia’s forest coverage has grown from 27% (one hundred years ago) to 53% (or 3.4 million hectares), with Estonia (2.3 million hectares) and Lithuania (2.3 million hectares) accounting for 8 million hectares of forestland.
At the same time, ownership patterns have also shifted, with more than 50% of Baltic forests now in private hands, much of it on highly productive lands—including 27% of Latvian forests, now birch forests.
Swedish companies have played a significant role in expanding forest ownership in the Baltic region, Backman said, with Södra Skogsägarna, the largest private forest owner in Latvia (holding 125,000 hectares) followed by IKEA (108,000 hectares) and SCA, which has more than 70,000 hectares of forests across Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania.
And when it comes to Swedish forests, Backman said timber prices have reached record levels, especially in the country’s south: “The sawmills are crying out for raw materials while the forest owners see no reason to rush felling.”
