Scottish Woodlands: Key takeover boosts UK’s largest forest management business

The group, which is headquartered in Riccarton, Edinburgh and is majority owned by its employees, reported turnover of £143.74 million for the year to the end of September 2025, up from £118.16m the previous year. Operating profit came in at just under £6m, up from £4.54m previously.

The company - ranked as the UK’s largest forest management business - is involved in a wide range of forestry operations, from tree planting to timber harvesting, and also has a utilities and infrastructure team.

Managing director Ian Robinson said: “While the results include the impact of acquiring RTS Forestry, the underlying performance of the parent company was very strong.”

RTS Forestry - headquartered in Crieff, and with offices in Inverurie, Inverness and Hexham, Northumberland - was acquired by Scottish Woodlands at the tail end of 2024. The combined business now has more than 300 staff, based in the four RTS offices and 19 Scottish Woodlands offices across Scotland, Northern Ireland, England and Wales.

Scottish Woodlands is 80 per cent owned by its employees (and 20 per cent by sawmiller subsidiary James Jones & Sons) and has run its own successful graduate development programme for the last decade to address industry skills challenges.

Robinson said: “We’ve continued to grow our own future leaders through the highly successful graduate programme, which has brought some fantastic new talent into all areas of the business. We have seen some difficult market conditions, but shown great strength and resilience across what is now a highly diversified company.”

Scottish Woodlands, which trades as Flintshire Woodlands in Wales and parts of the west of England, planted 2,750 hectares of new woodland in 2024-25 in Scotland - one-third of the total for the period.

Robinson added: “New woodland creation in Scotland is challenging at the moment, and we are working with industry body Confor to try to remove some of the barriers to greater woodland creation - which is vital to hit a range of policy targets on climate change, housebuilding and more.”