Three of the four most R&D-intensive European forest industry corporations were Finnish in 2007. Finnish forest industry companies spend about two thirds of their total R&D investments in Finland. 

A large part of machinery and equipment investments in the forest industry also involves the development of production processes, in addition to which companies also spend funds on efforts focusing on the creation of new business activities. However, these investments do not show up in the R&D investment figures.

The extensive research programmes launched under the umbrella of the innovation corporation Forestcluster Ltd also strengthen the total research effort of the forest cluster. The ongoing Intelligent and resource-efficient production technologies research programme focuses on the development of production methods that are more flexible and can be realised with substantially lighter investments than existing processes.

The Future biorefinery programme focuses on the development of functional and effective biorefinery technologies as well as on the creation of paths and value chains for the further processing of wood. Forestcluster Ltd’s third research programme, which is in the planning stage, concentrates on the customer solutions of the future.