Estonia's wood sector unstable, say local buyers of Danish-owned company

Estonian wood entrepreneurs have acquired the Danish-owned Flexa furniture company in Lääne-Viru County, along with its children's furniture brand Thuka. The new owners hope to decide within a year whether the factories can continue focusing solely on furniture production or need to branch out into wood processing.
The Danish company Flex had produced primarily children's furniture in Lääne-Viru County for more than 30 years.
Since early June, the factories in Kadrina and Viru-Nigula have been owned by Estonian wood sector entrepreneurs. Having one of the buyers' sawmills right next door to the furniture factory helped tip the scales in favor of the purchase.
"We know the employees of this company, we know the company's age and history," said Tõnu Ehrpais, a member of the supervisory board at Thuka Nordwood. "And for us, it also represents, to some extent, a market for materials, since part of the furniture is made from solid pine, which we produce ourselves. This is also a way to add value to a portion — albeit not a very large portion — of our own output."
At Thuka Nordwood's factories, furniture is made not only from Nordic solid wood but also from plywood and fiberboard.
Jaanus Aun, executive director at the Estonian Private Forest Union (EEML), called it a positive development that Estonian wood sector entrepreneurs found a way to buy a furniture factory that provides jobs for 100 people and had been at risk of closing.
"This is important for the entire Estonian economy — that an industry producing high-quality, high value-added finished wood products continues to survive," Aun highlighted. "Hats off to the wood industry companies able to make such investments."
Ehrpais said that their entry into the furniture industry, a new field for them, was prompted by the politically unstable situation in Estonia's wood sector.
"The current sector depends on who the minister is, whether they're about to leave and what their plans are," he explained. "It's been very difficult to invest in this sector lately. And as long as the extent of protected areas and commercial forests remains unclear, we don't see any opportunity to invest further."
Thuka-brand furniture is sold mainly in the U.K., with a limited share of its output also sold in Estonia.
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Editor: Barbara Oja, Aili Vahtla