Observations of pellet mills and logging in Estonia

Graanul’s Osula pellet mill

In spring 2018 and July 2019, we visited a total of three Graanul Invest pellet mills in Estonia, as well as looking at the impacts of logging in the country.

We have now published photos and evidence of what we saw:

Estonia Logging and pellet production

Graanul Invest exports pellets to Drax in the UK, RWE in the Netherlands, and Ørsted in Denmark as well as to other countries and customers across Europe). As our evidence shows, a high proportion of the wood used to make Graanul’s pellets consist of roundwood, i.e. whole logs, of all sizes and ages. The prevalent ‘forestry practice’ across Estonia is the extensive clearcutting of naturally regenerated forests, forests which would take many decades to regrow, even without the added impacts and threats of climate change. Rampant clearcutting forests was obvious everywhere we went in the countryside.

Clearcut near Ebavere

Clearcutting in Haanja National Park