To own forest or not? Vertical integration in pulp and paper sector

Vertical integration in forest industry refers to firms that provide large portion of wood from their own or controlled forests. Access to resources and competition for cost effective acquisition of industrial raw material are some of the main concerns and advantages for globalized forestry corporations. However, quantitative studies in this topic are still lacking especially at the global scale. This analysis is based on the logistic regression analysis on dichotomous variable whether company owns forest land or not. Data is based on sample of 52 forest companies reported in TOP 100 A Global Forests, Paper & Packaging Industry Survey, and the information provided with regards to corporate forest holdings and corporate financial performance available in corporate sustainability and other reports for year 2012. In results, we see that decision on vertical integration is significantly affected by the firm size, sales and profitability of the company. The influence of location and other relevant factors of firm performance are discussed to the extents that the data allows.