Holzindustrie Schweighofer

17th to 20th century

HS Timber Group started as a family business. The earliest known reference to the family Schweighofer's involvement in woodworking dates back to 1642, as documented in official records. The development of the family business commenced in 1956 when Franz and Maria Schweighofer acquired a sawmill in Brand, Lower Austria, with an annual capacity of 1,000 cubic meters.

Gerald Schweighofer joined the company in 1975 and in 1977 he opened the worldwide unique profiling line for small diameter logs at the headquarters in Brand/Austria. This marked the beginning of a series of expansions and acquisitions, which included the opening of what was, in 1984, Europe's largest sawmill located in Ybbs an der Donau, Austria.

Further expansion occurred in 1991 with the acquisition and enlargement of a sawmill in Sollenau, Austria. This was followed by the takeover of the largest and most modern sawmill in Zdirec, Czech Republic, in 1996. By 1997, after acquiring sawmills in Bad St. Leonhard, Austria, and Plana, Czech Republic, the company's total capacity increased to 3 million cubic meters across six mills.

In addition, the Group entered into a joint venture with the Japanese company Maiken to establish the glue laminated timber mill Lamco, and founded the Schweighofer Privatstiftung (today: Evergreen Privatstiftung).

In 1998 Holzindustrie Schweighofer merged with Enso Timber and became the third largest saw milling company in the world. The Schweighofer family sold its shares, along with all sawmills in Austria and the Czech Republic to Stora Enso Timber in 2001.

21st century

In 2003 the group started production at a new and modern sawmill in Sebeș. This was followed by the commencement of a second sawmill in Rădăuți in 2008. In 2009 the group acquired the Swedwood manufacturing facility in Siret, located near their second mill. This facility, after modernization and expansion, began producing solid wood panels. In 2010, Holzindustrie Schweighofer BACO started producing blockboards and concrete formwork panels at the former Finnforest factory in Comăneşti.

In 2011, the group bought the M-real Hallein GmbH in Austria, which the Group sold again in September 2017 to TowerBrook Capital Partners. Schweighofer explained this move with increasing its focus on its core business of sawmilling.

In 2015 the group bought another sawmill in Kodersdorf in Germany from the Klausner Group.

Business areas

The core businesses of HS Timber Group are:

Production and processing of wood products

Production of bioenergy

Trade of wood products

Controversy

On May 22, 2014, a public letter from Ukrainian ecological organization Kyiv Ecology and Culture Center appeared indicating that construction of wood processing factory in Ivano-Frankivsk region of Ukraine would require 500 000 tons of gravel to be excavated from local river beds, thus threatening Carpathian ecology. Ecologists have never received any response from company officials.

The Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA) in 2015, releases their investigation of illegal logging in Romania. The report implicates Schweighofer as a major promoter and recipient of the destruction of Carpathian old growth forests. A comprehensive documentary released by Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project and RISE Project follows the illegal harvested wood in Romania.

On Feb 17, 2017, Forest Stewardship Council has disassociated itself from the company because of the company involvement in the purchasing and trading of illegally harvested timber in Romania and that this is having a negative impact on the country's natural protected areas. In the summer of 2017, FSC launched a stakeholder process in Romania, which sets out the conditions under which Holzindustrie Schweighofer may return to FSC.

In response to criticism, the company has presented an action plan for a sustainable timber industry in Romania. Its core measure is the self-developed GPS tracking system "Timflow". HS Timber Group records the route of all trucks that deliver saw logs to its sawmills. This data, together with photos of the loaded trucks, is publicly available at timflow.com. HS Timber Group wants to prove with this data that it does not receive wood of illegal origin and also adheres to its voluntary commitment not to accept wood from national parks.

An investigation in 2018 by Environmental Investigation Agency found that the company was continuing to buy wood from third party suppliers which comes from Romania's national parks. Holzindustrie Schweighofer publicly, strongly rejected these allegations. Moreover, the company has made a voluntary commitment not to process any wood originating from national parks. This commitment also includes areas of national parks (“buffer zones”) where harvesting is explicitly permitted by law.

In November 2021, the FSC announced the end of the disassociation and confirmed that HS Timber Group had met all requirements. The blockboard plant in Comanesti, Romania, was recertified again by FSC in January 2022.