Exports of timber and timber products from Ukraine since the beginning of 2025 amounted to 1.42 million tons, worth $671.8 million, which is 6% or 81.7 thousand tons more than in the same period of 2024, according to the State Customs Service (SCS). The State Customs Service (DMS) press service reported this.
The agency noted that pine products accounted for the largest share of exports (68.6% of the total), followed by spruce (19%) and oak (6.6%).
At the same time, since the beginning of 2025, customs authorities have detected violations amounting to more than UAH 31.4 million. In early May 2025, in cooperation with the State Forestry Agency, a whole scheme of illegal export of 2.9 thousand cubic meters of timber worth UAH 13.6 million was uncovered. In all 98 cases, business entities from one of the country’s regions submitted certificates of origin for timber issued for other consignments of goods to the customs authorities for the export of timber. In all cases, reports on customs violations were drawn up against the entrepreneurs, according to the State Customs Service.
To systematically eliminate the conditions for such violations, the State Customs Service, together with the Ministry of Environmental Protection and the State Forestry Agency, is preparing proposals for legislative changes that will provide customs authorities with automatic access to information submitted by exporters to obtain certificates.
The State Customs Service added that since the start of the full-scale invasion, confiscated timber worth UAH 14.2 million has been transferred to the defenders of Ukraine.
The state enterprise “Forests of Ukraine” has signed an agreement to supply 110,000 pine and spruce seedlings with a closed root system (CRS) to Slovakia, said the company’s CEO Yuriy Bolokhovets.
“We are replacing raw material exports with products of our own production. (…) We are negotiating the purchase of seedlings with a number of clients. Not only European ones,” he wrote on Facebook.
Bolokhovets recalled that for the first time, the Lviv Seed Breeding Center of the State Enterprise “Forests of Ukraine” exported seedlings in 2022. The feedback from European customers was positive. Therefore, in 2023, the state-owned enterprise again received a large contract.
The CEO of the state-owned enterprise noted that one of the advantages of planting material from the SCA is the ability to plant it almost all year round, which greatly simplifies the work of foresters. At the same time, the cost of creating a forest is reduced by 35%. After all, modern plants require much less seeds, fertilizers, space, and post-planting maintenance, as seedlings with SCA have more growth energy.
Currently, forest seed plants of the State Enterprise “Forests of Ukraine” operate in Zhytomyr, Ternopil, Khmelnytsky, Lviv, and Kirovohrad regions. This year, another center in Ivano-Frankivsk region has already been launched.
“Our goal is to produce 40 million seedlings per year with SCA. Most of them are intended for Ukraine, but we plan to increase exports as well,” summarized the CEO of the State Enterprise “Forests of Ukraine”.
As reported, Ukraine launched a forestry reform in 2016. As part of it, the sale of raw wood at electronic auctions has already been introduced. Since 2021, an interactive map of wood processing facilities has been operating in a test mode in a number of regions.
The industry has implemented the Forest in a Smartphone project, which contains a list of logging tickets for timber harvesting and allows you to check the legality of logging on the agency’s online map.
On June 1, 2023, Ukraine launched a pilot for the electronic issuance of logging tickets and certificates of origin of timber. In addition, the State Enterprise “Forests of Ukraine” has launched a pilot project to procure timber harvesting services through the electronic platform Prozorro.
