Development strategies for privately owned forestry in the mountainous region of Sweden

Forestry in Sweden as well as in other European countries is characterised by intense and increasing international competition resulting in decreasing roundwood prices in real terms. This is especially the situation in the mountainous region of Sweden with long transportation distances between the felling site and the processing industries located at the coast. The question arises whether forestry must be run more extensively than at present to achieve the optimal rate of silvicultural activities compared with the amount of timber cut. With this in mind, optimising economic analyses have been performed at the stand level as well as at the level of forest estates. Results of the analyses reveal that more intensive thinning (more frequent operations) and shorter rotation periods would increase profit and offset continuously decreasing roundwood prices. Intensive pre-commercial thinning (cleaning) is especially important for profitability of the subsequent thinnings and the final cut. The large number of cuts during the rotation will increase logging costs. However, this will be more than offset by the increasing production of economically matured dimensions of timber, an effect that will be still more pronounced when using new harvesting technology. Moreover, frequent high thinning operations (thinning ‘from above’ or removal of dominant trees) will result in more dense wood close to the pith, more evenly distributed year rings, and fewer and smaller knots in the lower part of the stem — in other words more valuable roundwood which will justify high transportation costs. Several biological and technical aspects of these treatment programs are discussed in the paper.