Sawmill industry in Central-Eastern Europe and the Baltics: country profile

Why these six countries belong in one profile

Czechia, Slovakia, Romania, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania are often grouped as the east of the European sawmilling map, but they share little beyond geography and a history of foreign capital in wood processing. Czechia and Slovakia are spruce-heavy and marked by bark-beetle salvage. Romania has the largest forest and harvest, a politically sensitive log supply and mills owned by foreign groups. Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania are small, coniferous and birch-rich economies selling mainly to the UK and EU.

The article compares the six on forest resource, harvest, ownership, industry structure, production and trade, raw materials, export markets, standards and the pressures of 2022-2026. Every statement is tagged with country and reference year; volumes are in cubic metres (m3) unless stated. Provisional, estimated or derived figures are marked. Figures marked "own calculation" were computed here from the cited numbers and are not published statistics.

Caveat: Eurostat and FAOSTAT could not be queried directly. Production and export series below were read from the DBnomics mirror of Eurostat dataset for_swpan (retrieved by DBnomics January 2026) and are secondary reads; FAOSTAT could not be reached at all. See the final section for what is missing.

Forest resource and harvest

Czechia

Czechia has been the most extreme case of a forest-health shock in the region. The Czech Statistical Office reports roundwood removals of 16,712,575 m3 excluding bark in 2025, about 1.1 million m3 less than in 2024. Salvage felling in 2025 was 5,275,965 m3, or 31.6% of removals, and spruce accounted for 64.8% of removals (Czechia, 2025; Czech Statistical Office, published 29 May 2026).

The trajectory behind these numbers is the bark-beetle calamity. A trade-press summary of Czech Statistical Office data gives damaged wood of 30.9 million m3 (99% of harvest) in 2019 and 33.9 million m3 in 2020, of which bark beetle accounted for 26.2 million m3 (77%) (Czechia, 2019-2020; Holzkurier via timber-online.net, 2024). A scientific paper puts total felling at a 2020 peak of 35.75 million m3 and recovery to roughly 15-17 million m3 per year (Czechia, 2020 and after; Journal of Forest Science, 2024). In 2023 total harvest was 16.6 million m3, of which 11.0 million m3 (about two thirds) was damaged wood; the 2013-2022 average was 21.7 million m3 harvested and 17.2 million m3 damaged (Czechia, 2023). Own calculation: the 2023 harvest was about 23% below that average (the source itself says 31%, apparently against a different base). The 2024 harvest was a forecast of 16.0 million m3 (provisional, Holzkurier). Spruce made up 46.8% and pine 16.0% of Czech species composition in 2022 (Czechia, 2022; Journal of Forest Science). Forest area could not be confirmed from a current source; an older paper cited about 33% forest cover (Czechia, 2014 data, published 2016), which is dated.

Slovakia

Slovakia's forest land was 2,028,172 ha in 2023, with stands covering 1,955,522 ha, or 41.4% of the territory (Slovakia, 2023; Report on the Forest Sector, cited in a biomass risk assessment). Felling in 2023 was 7.223 million m3, of which disturbance wood was 3.507 million m3 (48.6%), 85% of it coniferous. The risk assessment says felling rose 0.464 million m3 on 2022, while a public-broadcaster report says it was about 0.5 million m3 lower, so the direction of change is unresolved (Slovakia, 2023). Growing stock is 487 million m3 (Slovakia, 2023; STVR). Raw-wood supply was 7.101 million m3 and raw-wood exports were 1.839 million m3 (Slovakia, 2023); own calculation: exports were about 26% of supply.

Romania

Romania has the largest harvest in the group. INS reported a gross harvest of 19.17 million m3 in 2023, down 1.068 million m3 on 2022 (about 20.24 million m3, derived) (Romania, 2023; INS via Agerpres), and 19.41 million m3 in 2025 (Romania, 2025; INS via Capital.ro). A 2024 figure of about 18.64 million m3 can be derived from the reported rise of roughly 771,000 m3 but was not found as a published number. The forest fund grew by about 1,263 ha in 2024, but its total is reported as 6.61 million ha by one outlet and 6.46 million ha by another (Romania, 2024; INS via Informat.ro). Because forest fund, forest cover and inventory definitions differ, this article gives no single Romanian forest-area figure.

Estonia

Forest land covers 51.5% of Estonia (forest 46.8%, forest-free forest land 4.7%) in 2024, and forests cover 2.3 million ha in 2023 (Estonia, 2023-2024; Environmental Agency portal). Felling has stayed at 10-12 million m3 per year over the last decade (Estonia, 2024; Environmental Agency). A national estimate quoted by ERR News puts the 2024 logging volume at nearly 11 million m3 (Estonia, 2024; statistical forest inventory), while the Eurostat roundwood-removals series, read via DBnomics, shows 11,877 thousand m3 over bark for 2024 and 12,264 thousand m3 for 2023 (Estonia, 2023-2024). The two sources use different concepts, so they are not contradictory, but they should not be added together.

Latvia

Forest covers 51% of Latvia, with the forest-area statistic given as 3,299 thousand ha for 2022 (Latvia, 2022; Invest in Latvia, Forest sector 2022). The same document says about 13 million m3 of wood is harvested each year (Latvia, 2022, approximate). Growing stock was 681 million m3 in 2022, up from 546 million m3 in 2000 (Latvia, 2000 and 2022).

Lithuania

Lithuania's forest land was 2,207.6 thousand ha under the forest assessment in 2023, with productive stands of 2,066.3 thousand ha (Lithuania, 2023; Statistics Lithuania). Forest cover was 33.91% in 2025, up from 33.8% in 2023, against a 35% target for 2030 (Lithuania, 2025; National Audit Office, July 2026). Current felling volumes could not be read from an accessible source; a US government report gives gross felling of 7.6 million m3 in 2014 and 6.7 million m3 in 2015 (Lithuania, 2014-2015; USDA GAIN, 2017), which is old and is shown only to indicate scale.

Forest ownership

Ownership shapes how logs reach sawmills, because state forest enterprises sell through auctions or long-term contracts while private owners sell on a fragmented market.

• Estonia, 2024: state 51%, legal entities 22%, private individuals 27% of forest land (Environmental Agency portal). RMK, the state forestry commission, administers about half of the forest (ERR News, 2025). State forests are roughly two thirds coniferous and private forests roughly two thirds broadleaved.
• Latvia, 2022: state 46%, other (mostly private, about 135 thousand owners) 54% (Invest in Latvia).
• Slovakia, 2023: state forests hold 50.4% of growing stock and non-state forests 49.6%; in felling, state organisations took 54.2% and non-state entities 45.8% (Report on the Forest Sector via biomass risk assessment).
• Romania, 2023 and 2025 (share of harvested volume, not area): public forests accounted for 63.4% of the 2023 harvest (12.157 million m3) and 65.1% of the 2025 harvest (12.628 million m3); private forests took 30.8% in 2023 and 30.1% in 2025 (INS via Agerpres and Capital.ro). A harvest share is not an ownership share of the forest area.
• Lithuania, 2013-2014: the state held over 60% of forest land and about 250,000 private owners held 858,000 ha (USDA GAIN, 2017). This is dated; current ownership percentages were not found in an accessible source. The 2026 National Audit Office document does not give a state share.
• Czechia: the state enterprise Lesy ČR manages about 1.2 million ha (Czechia, reported 2025); the national ownership breakdown could not be verified.

Sawmill industry structure and foreign investment

No single source gives a harmonised sawmill count across these countries, and that is itself a finding. A Czech university study states that the total number of Czech sawmill production units "is not reliably monitored anywhere in the Czech Republic" and analysed 195 sawmills out of over 800 companies contacted, of which 30 had capacity up to 1,000 m3 per year and only 2 were in the 50,000-99,999 m3 class (Czechia, 2016 publication on earlier data). In practice the structure everywhere in the region is a long tail of small and medium family sawmills plus a handful of high-capacity industrial mills, many of them foreign-owned.

Large mills with disclosed capacity

The one group whose mills in the region are documented on its own pages is Stora Enso Wood Products. Company location pages give the following annual capacities (company-stated, undated, current at time of access in October 2026):

• Ždírec, Czechia: 580,000 m3 sawn timber, 220,000 m3 processed timber, 40,000 m3 CLT, 80,000 m3 pellets; 273 employees; founded 1872.
• Planá, Czechia: 390,000 m3 sawn timber, 220,000 m3 processed timber; 240 employees; founded 1995.
• Imavere, Estonia: 350,000 m3 sawn timber, 160,000 m3 processed timber, 100,000 m3 pellets; 312 employees; founded 1995.
• Launkalne, Latvia: 260,000 m3 sawn timber, 70,000 m3 processed timber, 50,000 t pellets; 155 employees; founded 2001.

Own calculation: these four Stora Enso mills alone have 1.58 million m3 of stated sawn-timber capacity, about 20% of the combined 2023 coniferous sawnwood production of Czechia, Estonia and Latvia as shown below (8,025 thousand m3), though capacity and output are not the same thing.

Romania: foreign groups and consolidation

Romania's industry is the most visibly foreign-owned. In January 2021 the Romanian subsidiaries of Kronospan, Egger and Schweighofer (HS Timber) settled a competition case over a wood-purchasing cartel and paid a total of 26 million (Romania, 2021; ORF, currency not specified in the extract read). In September 2022 Romanian prosecutors carried out 146 house searches, including at Romanian subsidiaries of Egger, in an investigation into illegal logging, tax evasion and money laundering; Egger said it was not itself under investigation and that the authorities were targeting several of its wood suppliers (Romania, 2022; ORF).

Ownership has been changing. The Sebeş sawmill of HS Timber was approved for sale to the Ziegler Group in 2023 (Romania, 2023; Global Wood Markets Info headline list). After the Ziegler group's insolvency, Kronospan, described by the adviser as an Austrian group operating in Romania since 1998, acquired ZG Timber Sebeş S.R.L., a sawmill with pellet capacity of 225 thousand tonnes per year and roughly 500 employees (Romania, announced 5 March 2025; Taylor Wessing). The Romanian competition authority reviewed that takeover (Romania, March 2025; headline only).

Estonia and Latvia: strong domestic mid-size players

Estonia's largest company in the sector by 2024 turnover was Viiratsi Saeveski AS at EUR 44.14 million, up 23.7%; trade press says sawmilling drove the sector's recovery (Estonia, 2024; Wood & Panel, September 2025). Latvia's forest-industry exports were EUR 3.41 billion in 2024, up 3.4% (Latvia, 2024; Ministry of Agriculture via Timber Industry News). A secondary report gives EUR 3.44 billion for 2025 with a 1.6% decline (Latvia, 2025; Db.lv via Derevo.ua); these two statements are not consistent unless the 2024 baseline was revised, and this article does not reconcile them (unverified).

Slovakia and Lithuania

For Slovakia no source on sawmill structure, major mills or foreign ownership could be opened (unverifiable in this research). For Lithuania, a national innovation agency overview reports 2,126 wood-processing enterprises and 27,046 employees at the start of 2021, 99.8% of the enterprises small or medium-sized, and wood-processing production value of EUR 1,814.8 million in 2019 (Lithuania, 2019-2021); it does not separate sawmills from furniture and other processing.

Production and trade by year

The table below uses the Eurostat series for coniferous sawnwood (including sleepers) production and exports in thousand m3, read through DBnomics. Several features of the data call for care. Eurostat's database is compiled from national replies to the joint forest-sector questionnaire, and many Baltic values are rounded estimates. Latvia's 2024 production value is flagged "e" (estimated) and is identical to its 2023 value, which suggests a carried-forward estimate. Latvia's 2024 export value is flagged "p" (provisional) and exceeds its 2024 production, which is possible only because of re-exports of imported lumber or differing statistical sources. Romania's 2023 and 2024 export values are provisional ("p"), and Romania's 2024 production was not available when read. Czechia has no value for 2020 in either series.

Table 1. Coniferous sawnwood production, thousand m3

Source: Eurostat for_swpan, series A.CONIF.SN.PRD.THS_M3, via DBnomics (retrieved January 2026); decimals rounded.

Table 2. Coniferous sawnwood exports, thousand m3

Source: Eurostat dataset for_swpan, series A.CONIF.SN.EXP.THS_M3, read via DBnomics; (p) = provisional flag as shown in the source. Czech exports were 3,528 to 3,850 thousand m3 in 2016-2019, so the 2021 level may reflect a series break (unverified).

What the series show (own calculations)

Own calculation, six countries combined: coniferous sawnwood production fell from 16.95 million m3 in 2021 to 16.02 million m3 in 2022 and 13.22 million m3 in 2023, a fall of 17.5% in 2023 and 22.0% against 2021. Romania was not available for 2024, so no six-country total can be given for that year; the five reporting countries produced 10.87 million m3 in 2024 against 10.49 million m3 in 2023 (about +3.7%).

Year-on-year changes in 2023 were -28.9% in Romania, -22.0% in Slovakia, -20.2% in Latvia, -15.6% in Estonia, -11.0% in Czechia and +1.7% in Lithuania. The Romanian figure agrees in magnitude with a trade-press teaser describing a "30% decrease" and an "unprecedented crisis in 2023" (Romania, 2023; Global Wood Markets Info; the metric is cut off, so the match is indicative). In 2024 production rose in Czechia (+8.4%), Slovakia (+7.9%) and Estonia (+2.2%) and fell in Lithuania (-6.4%). Lithuania's jump from 894 to 1,326 thousand m3 in 2022 (+48%) could be real expansion or a revision; this article cannot tell which (unverified).

Own calculation, export-to-production ratios in 2023: Latvia 98%, Slovakia 62%, Lithuania 55%, Estonia 51%, Czechia 40%, Romania 34%. These are indicative only, because exports include re-exports and the two series come from different sources, but they show that Latvia is an export economy for sawn softwood while Romania and Czechia use more domestically or in further processing.

Species mix

• Czechia, 2022: spruce 46.8%, pine 16.0% of the species composition; 2025 felling was 64.8% spruce. The sawmill sector is therefore spruce-dependent and exposed to the replacement of spruce through reforestation: 56.3% of 2025 afforestation area was conifers (Czechia).
• Slovakia, 2023: stands are 64.8% broadleaved and 35.2% coniferous; beech 35.4%, spruce 21.1%, oaks 10.3%, pine 6.4%. Felling in 2023 was 53.3% softwood and 46.7% hardwood, and growing stock is 39.4% softwood and 60.6% hardwood.
• Romania, harvest share: conifers 37.5% (2023) and 40.4% (2025); beech 32.3% and 30.8%; oak 10.6% and 12.5%. Beech and oak give Romania a hardwood sawmill segment that the others lack.
• Estonia, 2024: 83% of stands contain two or more species; roughly two thirds of state forests are coniferous and two thirds of private forests broadleaved. Individual species percentages were not provided on the page read.
• Latvia, 2022: a chart in the Invest in Latvia document lists birch 27%, pine 26%, spruce 19%, grey alder 10%, aspen 8%, black alder 6% and other 4%; the mapping of each percentage to its species is inferred from the chart layout and could not be fully confirmed.
• Lithuania, 2014: pine 33.2%, birch 21.1%, spruce 19.7% of stand area (USDA GAIN, 2017; old data).

For sawmills the practical consequence is clear. Czech and Baltic mills are built around spruce and pine and compete with Nordic suppliers in the same grades, while Romanian and Slovak mills can supply beech and oak that do not compete with Nordic lumber at all.

Raw-material issues

Romania: illegal logging, the EUTR and traceability

Romania is the clearest case in which log legality is itself an industry issue. In February 2020 the European Commission sent Romania a letter of formal notice, the first step in an infringement procedure, citing inconsistencies in national legislation that prevented authorities from checking large volumes of illegally harvested timber; it gave Bucharest one month to stop timber firms exporting illegally harvested wood to the EU (Romania, 12 February 2020; RFE/RL). The same report cited a leaked government-commissioned inventory estimating about 20 million m3 cut illegally per year against 19 million m3 cut legally (Romania, as reported in 2020; a leaked figure, not an official statistic).

A September 2025 open letter from Bruno Manser Fonds, Agent Green and other groups, an advocacy document and not an official source, refers to infringement procedures started in 2020 under the EU Timber Regulation (EUTR) and the Habitats Directive. It quotes National Forest Inventory figures of about 20.6 million m3 per year harvested above approved management-plan allowances in 2013-2018 and about 17 million m3 per year in 2019-2024, and itself cautions that this gap may include natural mortality, unrecorded firewood and measurement error (Romania, 2013-2024). Own comparison: INS reports about 19.2 million m3 harvested in 2023, so the claimed gap is comparable in size to the official harvest.

An Environmental Investigation Agency report alleged in 2018 that Holzindustrie Schweighofer sourced more than 35,000 m3 from two national parks between January 2017 and June 2018, that nearly half its Romanian log purchases came through third-party log yards lacking traceability, and that Japanese buyers took about half of its exports (Romania, 2017-2018; EIA via Romania Insider). These are advocacy allegations; company rebuttals were not reviewed.

Czechia and Slovakia: bark-beetle salvage and the log-price gap

Czech salvage felling flooded the market in 2018-2021 and then collapsed. Lesy ČR's total harvest was 14.4 million m3 in 2020, 11.4 million m3 in 2021, 9.2 million m3 in 2022 and 7.7 million m3 in 2023, with damaged wood falling from 9.8 million m3 in 2020 to 1.6 million m3 in 2023 (Czechia, state forests; timber-online.net, January 2025). Nationally, 2021 harvest was 30 million m3, of which 26.3 million m3 (87%) was calamity felling. Fastmarkets notes a price gap between fresh and beetle-damaged logs in Germany and Czechia (Czechia, 2025). Slovakia shows the same pattern at smaller scale: 48.6% of 2023 felling was disturbance wood (Slovakia, 2023).

Baltics: sanctions, log export policy and sawlog prices

Baltic mills lost Russian and Belarusian raw material and customers after 2022. Only headlines were accessible: a Lithuanian sawlog price rise described as "double in one year" (December 2021), a plan for a Lithuanian timber export ban amid sanctions-related shortage (June 2022) and a Baltic wood group suspending business in Belarus (June 2022) (Lithuania, 2021-2022; Timber Industry News tag page).

Latvia has signalled raw-material policy change. A secondary report quotes duties on unprocessed timber exported outside the EU of EUR 75 per m3 from 2027 and EUR 115 per m3 from 2028 (Latvia, 2025; Db.lv via Derevo.ua, March 2026); it was not confirmed in a primary legal text (unverified). The same report gives a 2025 fall in roundwood exports of more than 1 million m3 (22%) and softwood imports from Lithuania up 12% to 783,000 m3. Round timber made up 10% of Latvian exports, with a stated aim to reduce it to zero (Latvia, undated; LIAA).

Estonia's felling has been 10-12 million m3 per year, but a 2025 report says more forest was logged than grew back over ten years, and growing stock fell about 5.7% (27.4 million m3) in 2019-2023 (Estonia, 2019-2025; ERR News and Environmental Agency portal).

Export markets: UK, Middle East and North Africa, Asia

The UK

For Latvia the UK is the main single market. The Latvian Investment and Development Agency lists the UK, Germany and Denmark as the main markets for Latvian timber products in 2024, with exports to 107 countries (Latvia, 2024). For softwood lumber in the first half of 2025, trade press reports total export volume up 22% and value up 53%, with UK volume up 60% and UK value up 78%, and EU-bound shipments up 19% to 1.16 million m3 (Latvia, H1 2025; Timber Industry News, with Wood & Panel). Estonia's HS 4407 exports in 2025 went mainly to Latvia (EUR 40.6 million), the UK (EUR 29.8 million), the Netherlands (EUR 25.3 million), Poland (EUR 20.2 million) and Lithuania (EUR 20.1 million) (Estonia, 2025; Statistics Estonia). Lithuania's wood-processing exports in 2020 went to Germany (16%), Norway (11%), Latvia (11%) and the UK (8.6%), with the EU taking 75% (Lithuania, 2020; Lithuanian Innovation Agency). Across the whole EU, the UK takes 26% of non-EU lumber deliveries (EU-27, 2024; Fastmarkets).

Middle East and North Africa

A trade-press analysis of softwood lumber exports to the Middle East and North Africa in the first half of 2025 shows total volume of 5.68 million m3, up 11%. Romania is the only one of the six countries listed individually: 313,424 m3 in H1 2025 against 269,294 m3 in H1 2024 (+16%) (Romania, H1 2025; Holzkurier via timber-online.net, from Eurostat). Egypt took 1.60 million m3, Saudi Arabia 905,135 m3, Morocco 635,648 m3, Algeria 535,702 m3 and the UAE 375,718 m3 (MENA destinations, H1 2025). Baltic states and Czechia are not itemised; they may be included in "other EU countries" at 585,356 m3, but the source does not say so. This article therefore cannot put a verified number on Baltic or Czech MENA exports. An older trade-press teaser from 2012 said Baltic sawmills were selling in North Africa and East Asia to offset weak European demand (Baltic region, 2012; teaser only), which supports the long-standing orientation but not current volumes.

Asia

Latvia is the best-documented Baltic case. The Db.lv report shows softwood shipments to China rising from 386,000 m3 to 512,000 m3 in 2025 (Latvia, 2025; the source table does not make clear whether this is lumber, logs or both, so treat as unverified). Across the EU, Japan took 9.4% of non-EU lumber exports and China 2.2% in 2024, and China fell 37% in the first half of 2025 (EU-27, 2024-2025; Fastmarkets). In Lithuania, exports to China fell 38% to EUR 20 million in 2020 (Lithuania, 2020), a trade that was blocked by a political dispute in December 2021 according to a Timber Industry News headline. Romania's historic link is Japan: the EIA reported in 2018 that Japanese buyers took about half of Schweighofer's exports.

Standards, certification and compliance

Compliance is moving from a voluntary signal to a legal obligation. The EU Deforestation Regulation (EUDR) covers wood. According to the European Commission, it applies from 30 December 2026 to large and medium operators and from 30 June 2027 to micro and small operators, except that micro and small operators already covered by the EU Timber Regulation (EUTR) apply from 30 December 2026; it was amended in December 2024 and December 2025 with simplification measures (EU, status read October 2026). The page does not say whether sawnwood is individually listed, so product scope must be checked in the legal text (unverified). For Romanian mills, which already faced EUTR infringement action, geolocation and legality evidence raise the stakes; the 2025 NGO letter argues Romanian exports carry a non-negligible risk of failing the EUDR (Romania, 2025; advocacy view).

Estonian trade press calls certified timber from responsibly managed forests a competitive advantage in European markets (Estonia, 2025; Wood & Panel). Country-level FSC and PEFC certified areas could not be read, because both organisations' facts pages link to dashboards that were inaccessible, so no certified-hectare figure is given (unverified).

Challenges 2022-2026

The evidence collected points to six overlapping pressures.

1. Demand shock after 2021. Own calculation from Eurostat series: six-country coniferous sawnwood production fell 22.0% from 2021 to 2023. Latvian officials and industry blamed falling construction demand in Latvia, Europe, North America and Asia and volatile raw material prices (Latvia, 2024-2025; LIAA), and Nordic permit slowdowns hurt prefabricated-house producers.
2. Log supply and price. Romanian state auction volumes were low and prices high in January 2023; the Czech salvage surplus ended; Estonian growing stock declined in 2019-2023; and Latvia is planning export duties on unprocessed wood from 2027 (secondary source).
3. Legality and traceability. Romania's long-running infringement and enforcement actions (2020 notice, 2022 raids, 2025 EUDR debate) make due diligence a cost for every mill buying logs there.
4. Ownership churn and insolvency. The Ziegler Group's 2023 purchase of the HS Timber Sebeş site, its insolvency and the 2025 sale to Kronospan show how quickly Romanian assets changed hands.
5. Energy cost and geopolitics. Estonian trade press names fluctuating energy costs and geopolitical shifts as challenges (Estonia, 2025). Sanctions on Russia and Belarus changed raw-material flows and removed some eastern customers, though no volumes were verified.
6. Market diversification. Latvian softwood volumes to the UK rose 60% in H1 2025 and Romania's MENA shipments rose 16%; Baltic positions in China and Japan are documented only fragmentarily.

Comparison table

Table 3. Country comparison with sources and reference years

Sources for Table 3: Eurostat for_swpan and for_remov via DBnomics; Czech Statistical Office (2025); Slovak Report on the Forest Sector 2023; Statistics Lithuania 2023; National Audit Office 2026; Estonian Environmental Agency; Invest in Latvia 2022; INS via Agerpres, Capital.ro, Informat.ro; Stora Enso pages; USDA GAIN 2017. "Not found" means unreadable from accessible sources.

Sources used

All sources are listed in the structured source list of this record; every one was opened during research on 26 October 2026. The main data series are Eurostat datasets for_swpan and for_remov (via DBnomics), the Czech Statistical Office, INS Romania, the Estonian Environmental Agency, Statistics Lithuania, Invest in Latvia, Stora Enso location pages and the European Commission EUDR page.

Limits of this article

• Eurostat and FAOSTAT could not be queried directly. All Eurostat figures are secondary reads from the DBnomics mirror. FAOSTAT data was not obtained, so no FAOSTAT figure appears.
• Romania's 2024 sawnwood production was not available. Latvian 2024 production is an estimate equal to 2023. Several export values are flagged provisional. The Lithuanian production jump in 2022 and the Czech export level in 2021 may reflect revisions or series breaks, and were not checked against national statistics.
• National statistics offices in Czechia, Slovakia, Romania, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania use dynamic tables that could not be read, so national production figures were not cross-checked against Eurostat.
• Forest area and ownership for Czechia, and current ownership and felling for Lithuania, were not obtained from current accessible sources. Slovak sawmill structure and major mills were not found. Sawmill counts are unavailable for all six countries.
• Several trade-press articles were paywalled; only teasers or partial text were read. NGO and EIA statements are allegations, not court findings.
• The Latvian export duty on unprocessed timber and the 2025 Chinese shipment figure come from one secondary report and were not confirmed in a primary text.
• Verified volumes for Baltic or Czech sawnwood exports to the Middle East and Asia were not found. The Middle East analysis covers Romania only.
• FSC and PEFC certified areas by country could not be read. Technical standards (grading, CE marking) were not verified.
• Own calculations are simple percentage changes and ratios and inherit the data limits above. Sources were read on 26 October 2026.