“As is well known, the situation became increasingly difficult for Western companies after the start of the war in Ukraine,” Christoph Kulterer, owner and CEO of the Hasslacher Group, states in a press release and adds: “In order to ensure the future of the company and our employees, for whom we feel responsible, we have decided to sell our Malaya Vishera site to Russian VLP Group.”
Austrian company OOO HasslacherLES is located around 200 km south of St. Petersburg in Malaya Vishera and has been operating there for more than 30 years.
The buyer is the VLP Group. According to research done by the Holzkurier, the group has been cutting 840,000 m³ of log wood a year. Annual softwood lumber production lately totaled 410,000 m³. The group also produces 30,000 tons of pellets each year. The VLP Group leases 1 million ha of forests where it harvests 1.6 million m³ of log wood a year. That would be enough to supply the site in Malaya Vishera as well.
As the Holzkurier had reported, Hasslacher originally had plans to increase cutting from 200,000 to 400,000 m³ a year in addition to producing around 50,000 m³ of glued timber products, most of which would have been exported overseas. The expansion plans were signed in Vienna in 2018 in the presence of President Putin.
The sawmill in Malaya Vishera was founded in the 1990s by Holzindustrie Leitinger. The Hasslacher Group acquired the site in 2009 and has continuously modernized and expanded it since then. In addition to spruce, pine and birch lumber as main product, planed timber and pellets are also produced there.
#1 for glulam
Based on research, the Holzkurier identified the Hasslacher Group and its Russian production site as number 23 of Europe’s biggest sawmills. When it comes to glue-laminated timber, the Carinthian family company is the number one.
The group is also the undisputed number one in Europe when it comes to the number of acquisitions. In February 2023, Spanish Egoin Wood Group was added to the list. One month before, Hasslacher had acquired the sawmill and solid structural timber production of Dickel-Holz in Schmallenberg/DE. Last year, Gemson, a manufacturer of special glued timber in Rangersdorf, and Holzbau Hofer, which is based close to Nussdorf, were taken over.
In November 2021, the Hasslacher Group bought Lau Forstservice in Rennweg am Katschberg.
The Hasslacher Group with its headquarters in Sachsenburg looks back on more than 120 years of company history, and employs a total of over 2,000 people.
