For new investors in forestry in Uruguay most opportunities are existing plantations coming up for sale after the harvest of their second growth cycle — the point at which many owners are eager to exit. This timing works in the buyer’s favor: the forestry project has already been approved, and it dates from a period when permitted planting percentages were higher than what would be authorized under current regulations. In other words, buyers acquire land with a plantation footprint that couldn’t be replicated today.
The large majority of these plantations are eucalyptus destined for the pulp industry, with UPM and Montes del Plata as the two dominant buyers in this market. Pine represents a much smaller share of overall volume by comparison.
The management of plantations is crucial when planting and previously when applying for the forestly approval. Application of carbon credits in Uruguay is less likely due to requirements of additionality. This is the principle that a carbon credit project must produce a climate benefit that would not have happened anyway under normal circumstances. In other words, the emission reduction or removal has to be caused by the project itself — driven by the revenue or incentive from the carbon credits — not by something that was already going to happen due to existing regulation, standard business practice, or ordinary profitability.
If the activity would have occurred regardless (business-as-usual), the project fails the additionality test and shouldn’t generate valid credits, since the credits wouldn’t represent a real, incremental reduction in emissions.
The success of forestry in Uruguay is not only primary production, but increasingly also in processing industry.
Japanese Investment in Uruguay’s Forestry Sector
The flagship case is Oji Holdings Corporation, one of the world’s largest paper, pulp, and packaging companies. In 2024, Oji established a new subsidiary, Oji Uruguay Forest Company S.A.S., and acquired roughly 41,000 hectares of pine and eucalyptus plantations in Tacuarembó and Rivera for approximately USD 288 million — bought from US asset manager The Rohatyn Group as part of Oji’s broader strategy to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions by expanding forest plantations abroad. The deal received formal approval from Uruguay’s Ministry of Livestock, Agriculture and Fisheries and the President’s Office, and is described by Uruguay XXI as the most significant Japanese investment in the country’s forestry sector to date
The Growth of Uruguay’s Forestry Industry
Uruguay’s forestry sector has grown into one of the most dynamic parts of the economy since the 1987 Forestry Law, and its success is increasingly visible not just in planted hectares, but in major downstream industrial investment — sawmills and processing plants backed directly by international capital betting on Uruguayan wood.
Lumin — backed by BTG Pactual’s Timberland Investment Group and British Columbia Investment Management Corporation — manages 120,000 hectares across Rivera, Tacuarembó, Cerro Largo, and Treinta y Tres, and invested USD 136 million in a new plywood plant in Melo.
Arboreal, which entered the market in 2021 by acquiring the Frutifor sawmill in Tacuarembó, has since built South America’s largest CLT (cross-laminated timber) and Glulam plant — a nearly USD 60 million investment. In 2026, it secured a USD 40 million financing package from the IFC and ILX, the Amsterdam-based asset manager, to expand production and strengthen sustainable, FSC-certified wood processing — a strong signal of institutional, ESG-aligned confidence in Uruguay’s forestry value chain.
BrasPine (Brazilian, Paraná-based) is making its first move outside Brazil with a USD 250 million pine sawmill project in Rivera/Tacuarembó, backed by an additional USD 171 million land acquisition (~18,800 ha) to secure its own timber supply.
Together with UPM’s USD 3 billion second cellulose plant (2023) — Uruguay’s largest-ever foreign investment — these deals reflect a broader pattern: since 2019, Uruguay has attracted more than USD 650 million in international capital into wood and pulp processing alone, moving the sector from raw timber exports toward high-value industrial manufacturing.
Japan joins Finland, Brazil, the US, and Chile as major sourcing countries in Uruguay’s forestry sector, and — together with UPM (Finnish), Lumin (BTG Pactual/BCI-backed), Arboreal (US/ILX-backed), and BrasPine (Brazilian) — reinforces the narrative that Uruguay’s forestry asset base is trusted across multiple, unrelated pools of sophisticated global capital, not just one region or investor type.
