The first timber industry cluster was created in Karelia

The timber industry cluster of Karelia was included in the register of Russian industrial clusters by Order of the Ministry of Industry and Trade of Russia No. 5101 dated November 1, 2024, as reported by the press office of the regional Ministry of Industry and Trade.

The cluster’s key participants are RK-Grand (Pitkyaranta wood pulp mill) from Karelia, Serpukhovskaya Bumaga (“Serpukhov Paper”) from the Moscow Region, and Kirovpaper from the Kirov Region. According to data from RBC Karelia, the cluster also includes L-Trans from Pitkyaranta, Sortavalsky Sawmill, and Zapkarelles, a timber harvesting company from Suoyarvi. The Industrial Development Fund of Karelia is established as the industrial cluster’s specialized organization in the territory of the region.

The cluster’s inclusion in the register of the Russian Ministry of Industry and Trade enables cluster participants to raise additional subsidized funding for implementing their projects, including subsidized loans of 2 to 100 billion rubles (at 30% of the key rate by the Central Bank of the Russian Federation + 3% per annum); subsidies for purchasing pilot batches of products (up to 50% but no more than 150 million rubles); lower insurance premiums (down to 7.6%) for industrial cluster participants who are investors under federal Special Investment Contract 1.0; and the right to apply tax and customs monitoring by all industrial cluster participants.