From a local family business to a globally sought-after exporter – Stiga RM turns 30
This month, Stiga RM, one of Latvia’s leading logging and wood processing companies, celebrates its 30th anniversary on the market. It was founded in May 1994 in Tukums and over the last few years has grown from a local family-run business with fifteen employees to a corporate group and a successful exporter with a global reach and a team of more than 550.
Joining the group’s five companies under a single brand, Stiga RM is currently active in wood processing, forestry, metalworking, timber transport and employees’ real estate development. As the company’s CEO Andris Ramoliņš notes, Stiga RM is a story about the desire to set an example that Latvian companies can successfully assert themselves in the global business arena – to develop determinedly and be highly competitive: “We are proud to be a Latvian company and to carry our country’s name out into the world,” he emphasises.
Fostering the conditions for Latvia to be a country producing high-quality products
“Smartly used timber” – this slogan is how Stiga RM incorporates its goal and the company’s business philosophy of how, instead of exporting raw forest or virgin wood products, Latvia should produce as many value-added products as possible that are in demand around the world.
This has been the company’s strategy over the last ten years: to modernise production, follow global trends, introduce new products and develop new production lines to offer Latvian-made, high-quality, value-added products to the entire world. Currently, Stiga RM’s Kuldīga plant produces birch plywood from high-quality Latvian birch wood, which is exported to more than 50 countries worldwide, with the largest markets being Germany, the UK and the USA.
In 2026, the world’s most advanced production facility of Wood Wool Cement Board (WWCB) will start operations in Tukums. Stiga RM announced its intention to develop a third wood processing plant in April this year by signing an agreement to acquire the Ogre sawmill Norupe. With the approval of the Competition Council, the company will be able to complete the transaction and implement its plan to build a new, modern, technologically advanced production facility for high-quality wood products on the site of the existing sawmill within the next few years.
“It is a great pleasure to be taking the first step outside of Kurzeme in the anniversary year and expand our activities to Vidzeme, applying the accumulated knowledge in the production of high value-added products. The more interesting and well-paid jobs we can offer in Latvia, the more educated professionals will be interested in staying and not taking their services abroad. We will continue seizing opportunities to promote the development of the Latvian wood processing industry, its competitiveness and export growth, contributing to the Latvian economy and its people,” says Andris Ramoliņš.