Tornator Braşov has invested EUR 50 million in purchasing forestland

• The Romanian branch of Finnish consortium Tornator OY wants to triple its forestland holdings in the next three years

Ovidiu VRÂNCEANU,BRAŞOV

Finnish company Tornator, specializing in the exploitation of forestland, has opened a Romanian branch in Braşov. According to Zoltan Kosy, country manager at Tornator, the investments of the Finnish company in Romania amount to around EUR 50 million. Just last year alone, Tornator has acquired 10000 hectares of forestland in Romania, and its holdings might triple in the coming years.

The company owns 600000 hectares of forestland in Finland and an additional tract of land in Estonia, with Romania being the third country in Europe that the company has expanded into. The company is looking to expand its holdings to 50000 - 100000 hectares of forestland in the long run. The average price of a hectare of forestland is EUR 2000 - 3000, which means that at this price, Tornator"s investments could range somewhere between EUR 100 EUR 300 million.

Kosy said that the Finnish company is not interested in building a wood pulp factory in Romania, as the company specializes in forest management mostly. "We made a map with all the countries in Europe. Romania has fulfilled two major requirements: large areas of forestland available and many individual forestland owners", Tornator officials said last year, when they entered the local market. "We want to invest in forest, and then we are going to sell wood to local producers", they added. The company will sell some of the trees while replanting more to continuously replace them.

In January, Tornator began delivering timber to Romanian companies, with the Finnish company showing extreme interest in bio-energy companies lately.

The revenues from the sale of timber will amount to EUR 1-2 million on the Romanian market. "Our earnings depend on the price of wood that changes very much right now. It is very difficult to make any forecasts because the construction industry is in crisis, and end users are very unstable", Mr. Kosy said. He says that unlike other economic sectors, forestry requires very long term investments of decades, which have a high degree of safety, in spite of their lower returns.