Large Finnish forest industry companies want to increase the size of their harvest-ing service enterprises after the extremely low industry production volumes in 2009. This has required harvesting enterprises to grow. However, profits in this small and medium size enterprise business have been low, especially since the 2009 downturn. Thus there has been only limited potential to grow organically. Other possibilities are to organise cooperation in the main - subcontractor base or to network to establish a limited company owned by independent entrepreneurs to make agreements with customers.

The harvesting enterprises and their growth opportunities were analysed by statis-tical methods using the tax authority data of about 1000 enterprises for the 2001–2008 closing of the books. The usability of all applicable ratios was tested, and results were produced in the form of tables and figures. The closing of the books data from 2008 was analysed, revealing interesting relations and eight independ-ent factors which describe success and failure factors. Recommended ratios were defined for the analysis of the whole wood-harvesting sector and for researching individual enterprises.