More than 80 per cent of the production forest in Norway is personally owned and family forestry is the dominating type of forest ownership with an average size of 60 hectares. The whole forest area in Norway is certified under the PEFC scheme. 80 per cent of the annual cut is harvested and sold through the forest owners co-operatives in the Norwegian forest owners’ federation.
The Norwegian forestry and forest based industry are openly exposed to international competition. With a very stable forest ownership structure, this leads to the need for constantly cost cutting and the search for new income sources at the properties. The Norwegian Forest Owners’ Federation has led a study of the present income structure of Norwegian forest holdings and an analysis to identify the main income potentials.
Surprisingly in a wood producing focused forestry we found that the present income from wood was less than two thirds of the total forest income. We found that the highest potential for future income increase for the forest properties was in the further development of three value chains: increased use of wood and the wood working sector, bio energy including bio fuels and forest based tourism.
Taking the development of the value chain of the forest based tourism as an example, the bases for the income has been the revenue from hunting and fishing rights and the letting out of cottages. To increase the business the basis has been to form management plans for the hunting and fishing resources, developing ways of forest owners’ co-operation and forming co-operatives in production and product development.
The most important part of product development has been to create add-on values to the “basic products” and to secure quality control, consumer focus and professional marketing. Co-operation with government, innovation foundations and professional partners along the whole line of tourism professionals have been the prerequisite for future success and value creation.