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Forests and plantations

Healthy forests and plantations are crucial for our business and essential for mitigating climate change, preserving biodiversity, and supporting the wellbeing of local communities. Our Forest Action program outlines a global approach to sustainable forest management principles and practices.

Wood is our primary resource for producing renewable products. We are globally a major purchaser of wood* and one of the largest private forest owners in Finland, and an owner and manager of forests in Europe, the U.S. and Uruguay.

Our sustainable wood sourcing includes company-level commitments and rules, and we adhere to internationally accepted principles of sustainable forestry. We apply credible, third-party verified schemes such as forest certification to ensure full traceability and continuous improvement.

We source a large portion of the wood we use from external forests except for Uruguay, where we own plantations, grasslands and protected areas. In Uruguay, most of the wood comes from our own plantations.

Sustainable forest management is essential for maintaining healthy forest growth and ensuring the resilience of ecosystems and their ability to adapt to changing climate. Forestry provides income and livelihoods especially in rural areas and creates wealth and prosperity for local communities. Forests are also an important place for recreation and cultural activities.

Material balance 2024

This is Forest Action

Our Forest Action program is a framework for forest sustainability and takes a holistic, global view by combining measures on climate, biodiversity, soil, water, and social contribution in our forests and plantations.

Forest Action promotes the implementation of these actions in all our wood sourcing areas: Northern Europe, Central Europe, the U.S. and Uruguay. The actions are focused especially on our own forests and plantations. Our land use and forestry planning are based on a comprehensive evaluation and preservation of ecosystem services, such as clean water. We ensure that our forests and plantations grow more than they are used.

Sustainable forest management and forest certification

Sustainable forest management means managing forests in a way that considers environmental, social, and economic needs to ensure the health and productivity of forests for future generations. Our commitment to forest certification ensures that we continuously improve our operations. Voluntary forest certification sets biodiversity requirements at a higher level than those required by regulations and national laws.

For example, in Finland, certification leads us to leave wider buffer zones and retain more trees. Environmental issues have a strong priority in the forest certification schemes, but forest certification also has additional requirements for labour management (social) and sustainable harvesting levels over long periods of time (economic).

Our forests in Finland and plantations in Uruguay are double certified under FSC (FSC N003385) and PEFC (PEFC/02/44-41). In the United States, our forests are certified under SFI, which is endorsed by PEFC.

We also support private forest owners through group certification schemes in Finland and Uruguay. Additionally, we actively engage with certification systems to help further develop them.

Our commitments

Our third-party verified and certified wood origin monitoring systems ensure full traceability.

We ensure that our forests and plantations grow more than they are harvested and continue to act as carbon sinks.

Forest biodiversity is critical to mitigating the effects of climate change and in preserving species and habitats.

We respect human rights and the rights of indigenous peoples in all areas of our operations.

We have set several sustainability focus areas at UPM group level, including forests, biodiversity, climate, water, and responsible sourcing, with targets and key performance indicators for 2030.

Read more about our group-wide 2030 sustainability targets

Get to know our forests and plantations

Our company forests and plantations are an important source of wood for our mills, but their role extends far beyond this. In addition to their role as carbon sinks, our forests and plantations play a key role in advancing modern, sustainable forest management practices and hands-on training for our employees and contractors.

Biogeographically, our forests in Finland are semi-natural boreal forests, while those in the U.S.are semi-natural northern temperate forests.
In Uruguay we have plantations established on grasslands, planted with non-native eucalyptus tree species. We do not convert natural forests into plantations.
We have four modern, technologically advanced nurseries, one in Finland and three in Uruguay.
Forestal Oriental, our eucalyptus forestry company in Uruguay, is a centre of excellence for our plantation operations. About 60% of our owned and leased land in Uruguay is planted with eucalyptus. The remainder of the land is protected, used for cattle grazing, or contains forestry-related infrastructure.

For more information, please refer to our annual report

Visit UPM Pulp for more information

Our forests and plantations in numbers*

916,000 hectares of forests and plantations owned in total**
522,000 hectares of forests in Finland
318,000 hectares of owned plantations, grasslands and protected areas in Uruguay
76,000 hectares of forests in the USA
174,000 hectares of leased plantations and grasslands in Uruguay
1,6 million hectares of private forest managed in Finland
135,000 hectares (15%) of our own land globally is protected or in restricted use
16.8% of our land area in Finland was protected or in restricted use***
40–50 million seedlings annually****
12.9 % of our land area in Finland is strictly protected

*in 2024
**522,000 hectares of forest land in Finland, 318,000 in Uruguay, and 76,000 hectares is in the United States
***in 2023, the baseline for 2019 was 15.5%. The protection percentage includes strictly protected forestry land (12.9%) and protected areas, which can be managed and used according to the instructions of authorities (3.9%).
****combined production capacity in Finland and Uruguay

Learn more about our environmental performance

We disclose a comprehensive amount of information about our environmental, social, and governance performance in our Annual Report 2024. The report complies with the EU Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD) and the European Sustainability Reporting Standards (ESRS).

Read more in our Sustainability Statement