“We have to admit that forest management practices in privately owned forests in Lithuania, which make up hundreds of thousands of hectares, are outdated, which may leave forest owners and forests themselves disadvantaged. In most cases forest owners lack a convenient tool for managing forests, and there are plenty of flawed, long established norms. Other times they simply lack the knowledge to take care of forests on a regular basis. We strongly believe that the tools which we will offer on our platform will enable forest value to grow by at least 10% on a yearly basis and so forest management practices will shift”, says Justas Kaveckas, CEO of FOROS.
The platform’s founders believe that using the tools offered forest management will become simple and easily understandable for everyone: a click of a button is all that will take to start growing a new forest, manage an existing forest, sell or invest in a forest, or choose to rewild the forest and see it grow in value with options available that can be activated simply online.
“One of our main benefits is that we are not just another intermediary in forest management but we will strive to make it so that the forest manager would independently get the information, tools and be able to manage, grow and invest in forest, would have the best forest management prices. We want to defy the stereotype that a forest creates value only when it is sold to another owner”, says J. Kaveckas.
The platform will invite and encourage more investments in forests which will become simple and accessible not only to businesses but to every person. According to J. Kaveckas, in the future the company plans to offer crowdfunding investment solutions which will allow a group of people to become co-owners of a forest, or in other words, to invest in forests starting from 100 euros and earn a return on their investment using the tools provided by FOROS.
The new green investment platform is starting in the Lithuanian market, and in the nearest future will expand to Latvia, Estonia and Finland.
According to the company, the further vision for the startup is a fast growth, raising a seed round of investments and becoming one more Unicorn in the Baltic region.
“We clearly see the potential which is underutilized not only in Lithuania but also in other countries as well. This year we have set a goal for ourselves to become the largest green investment platform in the Baltics and have a very precise plan to how we are going to achieve it”, comments J. Kaveckas.
The startup FOROS is managed by Foros Global and is founded by Justas Kaveckas and Tadas Palaima. The company also manages a forest auction house platform in Lithuania where total sales to date have exceeded 18m euros.
