Sawmill capacity by country

What the review found

In September 2026 we re-verified 348 published sawmill capacities in four regional passes: the Nordics, the German-speaking countries, North America and the rest of the world. Of the 305 that could be verified against a primary source, 67 were wrong, 22 percent. The most telling errors were not wrong digits but wrong quantities: 20 figures measured the wrong thing, most often a log intake recorded as sawn timber or the reverse, and 12 turned out to be group totals, tonnage figures or finished-product volumes with no per-mill capacity behind them. In total 60 sawmill records were corrected or cleared.

The review was checked in turn. After each pass a second, independent reviewer tried to prove a random sample of the approved figures wrong, and every proposed correction was challenged the same way before it was written. 3 of 59 approved figures fell, 5 percent, and 6 of 64 corrections fell, 9 percent. Those are the error rates of our review, as distinct from the error rate of the data before it, and both are documented on the methodology page.

The review also settled a definition. Where a company publishes its own capacity figure for a mill, that figure is used. Where it does not, the capacity is the highest actual annual volume reported in the last three years, from a source we have read, and never a planned or design figure.

Capacity by country

As of 2026-09-15, WoodComp's register holds 994 published sawmills in 41 countries. 915 are operating. 420 of those carry a capacity in sawn timber, together 109 825 000 cubic metres per year, and 224 carry a capacity in log intake, together 79 029 000 cubic metres of roundwood per year. The two are different quantities and are never added together. 260 operating sawmills carry no figure, because no source we have read publishes one, and 11 carry a figure in another quantity that is not summed here.

How to read these numbers

• Sawn timber and log intake are different quantities. A capacity stated as log intake measures roundwood going in and is roughly twice the same mill's sawn output. The two columns are never added together, and no log intake figure is converted into sawn timber in these totals. Where a source does not say which of the two a volume measures, the figure is not used.
• The table follows the source. German, Austrian and many Central European mills publish their capacity as log intake, which is why those countries show a large log intake total and no sawn timber total. That is a difference in how the industry reports, not a gap in the data.
• Board feet are converted, and only for display. North American capacities reported in board feet are converted to cubic metres of sawn timber at 589 board feet per cubic metre, the factor used in FAO and UNECE statistics. Converted totals are rounded to the nearest thousand cubic metres, because the factor carries no finer precision. Each mill's page keeps the source's own figure next to the converted one.
• Only operating mills are counted. Idled, closed and converted mills are in the register with their history, but not in these totals.
• Group figures are never split. A company that publishes one capacity for several mills has not published a capacity for any of them, so the figure is not divided among its mills.
• An empty field is a finding. For many mills no source publishes a capacity in either quantity. We looked, and left the field empty rather than estimating.

Location, process and production

Of the 994 published sawmills, 895 (90 percent) are located to the plant itself and appear as pins on the map; the rest are placed at their town until the plant can be verified. 930 carry a process type (softwood, hardwood or mixed species). 38 also carry reported actual production, year by year, taken from company reports and trade statistics, kept apart from capacity.

Where the gaps were

Alongside the capacity review, the register was tested for sawmills it should hold but did not, above a threshold of 50 000 cubic metres of sawn timber per year. Thirteen countries were searched through national registers, industry directories and company filings, with Romania as an additional test. The countries where we already held many mills turned out to be nearly complete; the countries where we held few were where large mills were missing. Fourteen sawmills above the threshold were added from those searches, and each search was checked by a blind second reviewer before anything was written.