The concept of using drones for forestry machinery was born in 2020 when Olle Gelin drew his initial sketches on a whiteboard. He and his partner soon pitched the idea to investors and secured a first funding round of 500,000 Swedish kronor.
It all started when Mauritz Andersson, an expert in drone technology and systems design, googled for a forestry expert. He wanted someone to discuss how drone technology could be applied to forestry. At the top of the search results appeared Olle Gelin, who at the time was working at the Swedish Forest Research Institute.
Despite initial scepticism, Olle agreed to the meeting.
“At the time, it felt like drones were being presented as the solution to everything. I also believed that airborne technology was expensive, energy-intensive, and less efficient than ground-based machines. But when I looked more closely, I realized the opposite,” says Olle.
The conversation quickly turned to the concrete challenges of forestry.
“Forest machines have grown increasingly large in order to boost productivity, but they cause soil damage such as deep ruts and soil compaction, and often lead to more trees being harvested than is actually optimal.”
On a small whiteboard, Olle sketched out the idea: a drone that lifts trees directly during thinning, instead of machines driving on the ground.
I realized this was too important not to pursue, so I immediately applied for a leave of absence,
In the first sketches, the approach was more traditional: motors and mechanical force would be needed to delimb and process the tree, similar to today’s forest machines where the trunk is pulled through a powerful harvesting head.
“But when we started building and testing an initial prototype, it became clear that this solution was both heavy and energy-intensive. Instead, we let the tool fall along the trunk. It turned out that gravity itself could do the work of delimbing the tree — and a tool that would otherwise have weighed around 500 kilos could instead be built to weigh about 60.”
Shortly thereafter, Caroline Walerud joined the company. She comes from a forest-owning family and has a background spanning Cambridge, startups, and investment.
“Forests are one of our greatest global resources – and our most scalable technology for capturing carbon dioxide. If we can improve how forests are managed, the climate potential is enormous,” she says.
She explains that Airforestry sells a forestry service rather than the technology itself.
“Forest owners pay for thinning per hectare or per timber volume – just as they do today – but the work is carried out using a drone-based method that makes it possible to manage forests the way many owners aspire to: more precisely, gently, and sustainably.
The result is a healthier forest where more trees are allowed to grow, with higher productivity over time and increased value for the forest owner.”
The company is now moving toward commercial operations through pilot projects and customer collaborations, where revenues are already beginning to materialize. Customer interest is strong, and several large forest owners are driving development through pilot agreements and pre-orders.
“But permitting processes differ between countries, which affects our work. In Sweden, it can take up to a year to obtain approval for drone operations, compared with around a week in Norway.”
Although Airforestry is often described as a climate or environmental initiative, Caroline emphasizes that the business stands on its own economically.
“We are not dependent on subsidies or climate premiums to be competitive. We operate in an established market where forest owners already pay for thinning and forest management. The fact that we also contribute to a better environment is a bonus.”
In Sweden, the annual market for this type of service amounts to roughly SEK 5 billion. Profitability in Airforestry’s model is primarily determined by productivity per hour and operational scalability. Today, internal tests show a cycle time of about two minutes per tree, corresponding to just over 100 trees per hour when multiple units are used in parallel.
“To be competitive, we need to reach around 100–130 trees per hour. As we scale up, margins improve because more drones can operate without costs increasing at the same pace as in today’s systems,” Caroline says.
Airforestry’s environmental impact is also tangible. Currently, forest machines in Sweden alone consume 60 million litres of diesel each year specifically for thinning.
“With these battery-powered drones, we can eliminate that. It would correspond to roughly 150,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide per year.”
But according to Caroline, the greatest gain lies elsewhere. Each cubic meter of forest binds approximately one tonne of carbon dioxide.
“The real potential lies in allowing more trees to remain standing and grow. When forests are managed more precisely, growth patterns within stands change. If all the forest areas in Sweden that are currently thinned were instead managed using our method rather than ground-based machines, it would mean an additional sequestration of more than 20 million tonnes of carbon dioxide per year.
“Compared to Sweden’s total emissions, which range between 40 and 60 million tonnes per year depending on how you calculate, that corresponds to roughly one-third of the country’s total emissions – in theory something that could be influenced by a single company through the way forests are managed. So we could be a very important piece of the puzzle in Sweden’s journey towards net zero.”
Because modern forestry is largely shaped by the ground-based machines used for thinning and harvesting, it tends to favour more homogeneous forest stands. When the technical limitations imposed by heavy machines disappear, Olle believes forestry can be adapted more closely to the forest’s actual needs rather than to the requirements of machines.
“It opens the door to more diverse forestry over time, where more tree species can coexist and be managed more selectively. We can move from monocultures to mixed forests, because we are no longer constrained by the machines,” says Olle Gelin.
In 2024, SEB Greentech Venture Capital invested in Airforestry. According to Caroline, SEB’s support has primarily been about credibility and early operational guidance during the company’s development.
“Having an established bank behind us has strengthened trust in discussions with customers and investors, especially in the Nordic market where many of our partnerships are located.
“It has also been incredibly valuable to have a friendly, partly external person to share thoughts with and bounce ideas off. It has given us new perspectives that we truly appreciate in the collaboration. They’ve also taken the time to understand our challenges, reviewed our materials, and provided concrete feedback that has helped us improve and develop our work.”
Over six years, Airforestry has grown into a company with nearly 50 employees – and the solution looks essentially the same as it did on that whiteboard.
The technology is now being tested in the field, and new generations of drones are continually being developed.
We build, test, learn – and build again. That’s how you develop something that no one has done before,
For Olle, the issue is also deeply personal. His connection to the forest spans generations.
“I grew up on the same forest property outside Uppsala and am a fifth-generation forest owner on the same farm. The trees I planted as a child with my father and grandfather are the ones I’m thinning today. That’s why it almost hurts to see machines sometimes felling trees unnecessarily just to get through the forest – trees that someone once invested time, care, and belief in the future into, and that simply disappear.
“Now I’m planting forest with my own children. We’ve just received 1,000 seedlings to complement a small clear-cut area, and I’m doing that with my kids, knowing that one day it will be my children’s grandchildren who harvest this forest.”
SEB has invested in the Swedish company Airforestry, which aims to transform how forests are thinned. Using electric drones operating from above, the company seeks to reduce soil damage, improve the working environment, and make forestry more profitable in the long term – while also reducing climate impact.
Read more about Airforestry at: airforestry.com
Article published on May 12 , 2026
Text: Malin Edwards
Photo: Ulf Berglund
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