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LVM Supervisory Board Approves the Budget for 2022

The Supervisory Board of JSC “Latvia's State Forests” (LVM) has approved the company's budget for 2022. It is planned that this year LVM's revenue will reach 471.6 million euros, and profit – 163.1 million euros. 96% or 454.7 million euros of the company's revenue will come from the sale of wood – assorted round wood, growing trees, and wood chips. The total amount of investments in 2022 is planned to be 73.7 million euros, of which 40.2 million euros or 54% are to be invested in the development of forest infrastructure, including the construction, design and construction supervision of forest roads, forest drainage systems and bridges.

“The budget of 2022 drawn up by the company's Board provides for the largest turnover and profit in the company's history; however, we can also expect a number of challenges. The changing business environment calls for even closer collaboration with our customers, suppliers, and industry interest groups.

In turn, the rapid development of the company is driven by the improvement of the efficiency of LVM's purposeful internal processes by introducing innovative and modern technological solutions both to support its operations and to cooperate with many service providers. Mechanization of forestry, plant production lines and treatment of plants with the most state-of-the-art means of protection, drones, which allow you to assess the condition of the forest from above, are modern digitalization tools that allow forest workers to do their work faster, with less commuting and improved accuracy. Rapid development is also planned in the field of geographic information systems, which will benefit not only LVM, but also many other Latvian companies and the forest industry as such.  This is the strategic vision, which drives this year 's budget,” says Edmunds Beļskis, Chairman of the Supervisory Board of LVM.

In 2022, it is expected to sell a total of 6.95 million cubic metres of wood, including providing a range of round wood to customers in the amount of 6.78 million cubic metres. To increase the sales volume of forest tree seedlings, the development of the nursery “Mežvidi” will be continued in 2022; we will also continue the construction of cold stores in the “Pope” and “Valmiera” nurseries. In 2022, it is planned to sell 61.9 million forest tree seedlings, of which 56% or 34.8 million seedlings will be used for the regeneration of forests managed by LVM, while 13.8 million are planned to be sold on the Latvian market and 13.4 million for export. Of the total number of seedlings, 91% or 56.6 million are new technology seedlings – container seedlings and seedlings with an improved root system.

Also this year, LVM will continue to provide quality monitoring measures for black storks, lesser spotted eagles, sea eagles, ospreys, capercaillies and habitats, as well as take care of forest meadows and floodplain meadows. To minimize the impact of economic activities on the environment in those forest areas where logging machinery is difficult to access, the company will continue to use wooden shield carriageways to increase soil bearing capacity.

Trees sequester the largest volume of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and store carbon in the wood if they grow rapidly; therefore, to increase the carbon sequestration of the forests managed by the company, this year it is planned to cultivate 35.4 thousand hectares, while reforestation is planned for 18 thousand hectares.