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Abstract
The forest industry in several Nordic countries is heavily dependent on the timber supply of the nonindustrial
private forest owners. This study focused on the behaviour of forest owners on the timber
market when they chose a timber procurement organization. The study was made with a survey
among forest owners that during the year 2011 notified the Swedish Forest Agency that a final felling
would be performed on their forest property by way of their timber procurer. The survey was
answered by 418 forest owners (79% male and 21% female). It was found that there was no difference
in age distribution between the forest owners in the sample compared to the total age distribution of
forest owners in Sweden. Harvesting was more common on large properties. Half of the forest owners
had made timber deals with other timber procurement organizations before. Earlier research suggested
that forest owners do not analyse the market, but this study suggest that a change may have occurred.
Although a majority of the timber deals were made on the initiative of the forest owner, 17.2% of the
deals were based on a tender of the forest owner and this concerned mainly large timber deals. One in
four of the forest owners experienced problems, mainly related to how the harvesting operation was
performed. Female forest owners, absentee owners and share owners experienced significantly more
problems. The results indicate that the forest industry may need to intensify their efforts to learn and
understand forest owners better, especially with the new generation forest owners, to maintain their
level of timber procurement from the private forest sector.