Forestry as an investment 2020 (provisional)

• According to preliminary data, investment returns on wood production were less than 3% in 2020. Compared with the previous year, returns increased by 3 percentage points, while being more than 5 percentage points lower than on average during the previous five years.
• The value of net increment of growing stock accounted for nearly +2 percentage points of the returns (0.8 percentage points more than on average during the previous five years). Returns on wood sales accounted for +3.3 percentage points of the returns, and wood production subsidies covered +0.1 percentage points. The decrease in standing sales prices reduced the returns by -1.9 and total wood production costs by -0.6 percentage points.
• In terms of regions, returns on wood production ranged from -2.2% to +4.6% in Mainland Finland.
• The change in standing sales prices reduced returns in all regions but one. The decrease in prices had the highest impact in the regions of Kainuu and Lapland.
• Net increment of growing stock had a negative impact on returns in two regions. This means that the value of trees felled in the area was higher than the value of trees that grew in their place.
• In the calculation of returns, income, costs and the value of net increment are proportional to the previous year’s stumpage value calculated on the basis of the timber volumes of standing trees and the stumpage prices of assortments. In 2019, the stumpage value was approximately EUR 51 billion. According to preliminary data, the stumpage value was also EUR 51 billion in 2020.
• The nominal values have been converted into real values using the cost-of-living index. 
• Data from 2018–2020 is preliminary. 

The statistics were revised on 24 March 2021 due to the errors found in the felling statistics concerning industrial roundwood and energywood in 2019. Starting from 2017, the calculation of tree growth was changed so that growth is based on assortment-specific growth calculated on the basis of the results of annually published National Forest Inventories (NFI). In 2019, the impact of these adjustments on investment returns in the whole of Finland was +0.27 percentage points. These changes had the highest impact on returns in the region of Kainuu (-4 percentage points).