Facts about Sweden’s forests

Sweden has Europe’s second biggest afforested area after Russia; a country with immense wood supplies. Sweden’s productive forests cover about 23 million hectares. However, if this area is calculated according to international woodland definitions, it is 27 million hectares.

Private forest owner families hold about 50 per cent of Swedish forests, privately owned forestry companies hold about 25 per cent and the State and other public owners have the remaining 25 per cent.

Spruce and pine are by large the predominant species in Swedish forests. These two species count for more than 80 per cent of the timber stock. In northern Sweden pine is the most common species, whereas spruce, mixed with some birch, dominates in southern Sweden.

Forestry
Due to effective and far-sighted forest management the timber stock in Sweden has increased by more than 60 per cent in the last one hundred years and it is now 3 billion cubic meters. Growth has been most spectacular in southern Sweden where forests in the early twentieth century were thin and in poor condition.

In recent years felled quantities have been between 85 and 90 million cubic meters, whereas annual growth has been just over 100 million cubic meters. However, this does not imply that annual felling can be increased, because important parts of Swedish woodlands are protected in various ways for environment conservation purposes. Increased felling requires increased wood production by means of improved forestry methods. Current studies indicate that wood production can be increased by as much as 20 per cent by 2050 by means of improved forest management.

Forestry policy
Environment conservation is an equally important factor as timber production in Swedish forestry legislation. The basis of Swedish forestry policy is co-operation between the State and forest owners for the purpose of achieving sustainable forestry in the long term, where economic, environmental, cultural and social interests are taken into account in a balanced manner.

National parks, nature reserves and nature conservation areas cover an area of 4.2 million hectares, i.e. 10 per cent of Sweden’s land area. There are at least 220 000 hectares of protected, but productive woods below the forest growth limit. In addition, there are about 12 000 hectares of protected habitat types and 25 000 hectares of wood set aside and protected by environment conservation agreements. Big wooded areas are also protected through forest owners’ voluntary activities.

Forestry business
The forestry business is of decisive importance for the Swedish national economy. It is more important than in any other EU country, apart from Finland. In 2004 the production value in the forestry business amounted to about 197 million euro and the net export value of wood and wood industry products was 80 million euro.

About 90 000 persons are directly employed in the forestry business and the number of indirectly employed persons is about the double. Many of them live in sparsely populated areas where lumbering, other forestry work and transportation of wood products constitute the dominant economic activities.

In a global perspective Sweden is an industrial superpower in wood processing. The country is the fourth largest exporter of pulp, third largest exporter of paper and the second largest in respect of sawn timber. Sweden’s pulp and paper industry is the third largest in Europe and it supplies more than one tenth of the demand for paper in the EU countries.

In 2004 production of wood industry products was as follows:

• 17.0 million cubic meters of sawn timber,
• 12.1 million tons of pulp and
• 11.6 million tons of paper and cardboard, of which 2.6 million tons of newsprint, 3.0 million tons of printing and writing paper and 5.9 million tons of other paper and cardboard.

Forest energy
Swedish forests do not provide wood products and paper only. Somewhat over 80 per cent of the bio-fuels consumed in the country are forest based.

Forest based fuels, i.e. bark, chips, other forestry residues and energy from pulp factories’ residual black lye constitute almost 18 per cent of the country’s total energy supply, which will be about 647 TWh in 2005.

The demand for wood based fuels is expected to increase and it will constitute an important source of income for forest owners.

Family forestry
There are 355 000 forest owners in Sweden and they supply about 60 per cent of the timber used in industry.

Traditionally such ownership is called “private forestry”, but on international level this concept also includes corporate ownership. For that reason the forest owners’ associations in the Nordic countries use the word “family forestry” to denote private ownership on family level.

Women constitute 38 per cent of forest owners. Today more than one third of forest owners live in a municipality other than the one where their woodland is situated. 

About 150 000 forest owners are members of one of Sweden’s four forest owners’ associations. Taken together they own almost 90 000 pieces of afforested land.

The average size of a family owned piece of such land is 45 hectares.