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Abstract

Indexing the price of a service is a way to manage fluctuations in production costs over a long-term contract period. In Swedish forestry, logging contractors often have long-term contracts with their customers, and since they operate in an industry with low profit margins, indexation of contracts could be a good option to ensure that they receive the right compensation for their work throughout the contract period. This study examines the extent to which Swedish logging contractors have index-linked contracts, the contractors' perceptions of their functionality, and what areas for improvement contractors perceive there are for index-linked contracts. The analyzed data consisted of survey responses from 93 logging contractors. The results show that of those who participated in the study, larger contractors were more likely to have index-linked contracts compared to small forestry contractors. Moreover, there were geographical differences regarding the type of costs that were indexed, and it was also possible to identify differences depending on the type of client they had. Overall, contractors with index-linked contracts were satisfied with its functionality, but some considered it a problem that certain types of costs were not covered. In addition to this, the study concludes that better access to support and advice regarding index-linked contracts is needed.

Keywords

Harvesting services; index; forest machine entrepreneur; business agreements; survey

Published in

International Journal of Forest Engineering
2025
Publisher: TAYLOR AND FRANCIS INC

SLU Authors

UKÄ Subject classification

Forest Science

Publication identifier

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/14942119.2025.2585730

Permanent link to this page (URI)

https://res.slu.se/id/publ/144809