TALLINN - An Estonian logging company has acquired a license to fell timber across a large swathe of Russian territory just across the border.
Johanna Grupp, which is owned by Estonian timber businessman Marek Krippel, acquired logging rights last week across a territory equal to more than one-tenth of Estonia's forest area, the business daily Aripaev reported.
The company, based in the northern county of Laane-Virumaa, acquired 70 percent of Vertikal, a Russian logging firm that operates in the Boksidogorsk district of Leningrad oblast, along with logging rights to 284,000 hectares of mature coniferous forests for a period of 49 years.
Krippel said that his logging permits would allow him to harvest a total of 86,000 cubic meters of wood next year. As Aripaev noted, this is enough wood to keep an average-sized Estonian sawmill busy for a year or the country's largest sawmill, Imavere Saeveski, busy for six weeks.
Krippel declined to disclose the cost of the deal. "It was a six-digit number in euros," he said, adding that he did not use borrowed funds.
In addition to logging rights, Johanna Grupp acquired three railway spurs in the village of Yefimovsk and has already built 26 kilometers of road for transporting timber from the forest.
Johanna Grupp, a business consultancy and real estate company, was founded in 1999 and belongs to Krippel and his wife, Karmen Lutter. This summer it purchased the Purila property from the bankrupted Scanforest's estate, paying 11.2 million kroons (720,000 million euros).
Krippel worked for almost 13 years for Scanforest and timber companies that preceded it. He left his post as manager in September 2003 after the firm's foreign owners brought in the PW Partnerid consultancy to restructure the troubled company.
The British and U.S.-owned Scanforest was declared bankrupt in February.
Vertikal, the Russian company, employs 60 people.