IKEA has opened its New Zealand forests to outside scrutiny for the first time, revealing an estate that now ranks among the country’s 10 largest and a target for nearly doubling it. That is according to Kelvin Meredith, the Ingka Investments Forestland country manager, who led a tour of two Central Hawke’s Bay blocks and confirmed the furniture giant is chasing a 100,000-hectare New Zealand forest holding.
“We’ve got nothing to hide. We’re an open book,” Meredith said, answering months of anger from rural communities over fire risk and lost farming jobs after RNZ first reported local fears about the pace of new plantings in December. It is the first time the Dutch-owned investment arm has put its Hawke’s Bay operation in front of cameras since planting began in 2021.
Fresh numbers put to the group show Ingka has bought 42,705 hectares in New Zealand, converting 23,838 hectares from farmland and acquiring 17,175 hectares of existing forest, with 31,500 hectares in production and the balance held in riparian margins, indigenous vegetation and roading. The disclosure follows May’s Cypress Hill acquisition in the Tararua district, which pushed holdings past 43,000 hectares on the road to Meredith’s stated 100,000-hectare target.
Wood Central understands the estate places the IKEA franchisee eighth among New Zealand forest owners, behind Kaingaroa Timberlands, Manulife Investment Management, Matariki Forests, Taumata Plantations, Ernslaw One, OneFortyOne and Summit Forests NZ. Sixty per cent of timber harvested from the portfolio will sell into China, India or Korea, with the remaining 40 per cent supplying the domestic market, an export mix that feeds directly into the roadmap New Zealand and India endorsed on Saturday to double trade to $7 billion by 2030.
Even a 100,000-hectare holding would leave IKEA behind New Zealand’s three largest plantation estates, with Kaingaroa Timberlands at 178,000 hectares, Taumata Plantations at 121,000 and Matariki Forests at 117,000 all sitting clear of the target. Ernslaw One’s 95,000 hectares is the only major estate the doubling would overtake, in a sector with no official national ownership register.
“The focus is more on standing forests, just to mix our age class up,” said Dylan Foster, the Ingka Investments forestland operations manager, ruling out a fresh run of farm conversions and confirming New Zealand won selection because it is stable, safe, low in corruption and well researched for commercial forestry. None of the trees was planted for carbon credits, the company told the tour, though some form of offsetting may follow in future.
Sheep and beef interests, however, remain unconvinced, with Beef + Lamb New Zealand counting at least 300,000 hectares of farmland sold into forestry since 2017 and the Climate Change Commission estimating a further 900,000 hectares will convert by 2050, enough to cut national livestock numbers by 20 per cent. Whole-farm conversions, the lobby argues, strip out stock, jobs, local spending and rural services in a single transaction.
“Our big concerns are the scale and the pace of change,” said Julian Ashby, the Beef + Lamb New Zealand spokesperson, whose organisation is not anti-forestry but commissioned BERL research valuing the red meat sector at nearly $50 billion in annual economy-wide spending and 120,580 full-time jobs.
Fire adds a sharper edge to the community’s case after a blaze tore through 240 hectares of IKEA forest near Porangahau last year, in a country where foresters face no legal requirement to insure. Because Fire and Emergency New Zealand draws its income from a levy on fire insurance contracts, the estate contributes nothing directly to the crews who fought its own fire, and Meredith confirmed the company carries no cover it considers prohibitively expensive.
Meredith told the group IKEA would not shy away from paying its fair share, proposing a levy collected through the rates database at a set rate per hectare across all land uses. Forest owners already spend $21 million a year on fire protection, the Forest Owners Association said, while FENZ maintains foresters benefit significantly from levy-funded aerial firefighting, skilled crews and incident management whether they insure or not.
“I expect rates-based collection to be among the alternatives explored,” said Brooke van Velden, New Zealand’s Internal Affairs Minister, who has directed the Department of Internal Affairs to test whether insurance remains the right way to fund a service that collected nearly $800 million in levies in the 12 months to June 2025. Officials are expected to report back before the end of July, with the findings informing any future legislative rewrite of fire and emergency funding.
“The wetland serves as a bit of a filter for the environment,” said Blake Jones, the forest manager who walked visitors through the first block, an 850-hectare purchase 15 minutes from Waipukurau, where a 10-hectare native setback now rings a wetland the company is restoring as a sink for the whole catchment. At Wallingford Station, further down the road, Ingka subdivided 100 hectares, including the homestead, so the vendor’s family stayed on, and a young family moved in behind them.
Community numbers went on the record too, with Meredith confirming 250 staff across the New Zealand operation and a workforce that climbs to 800 through planting programmes. Pruning crews will work the estate for the next 10 to 12 years, Meredith confirmed, as Ingka pushes a 43,000-hectare portfolio towards its stated 100,000-hectare target.
