Lithuania has long been one of Europe's more export-oriented wood-processing countries, but the scale and direction of recent investment are changing the structure of the industry. Large sawmills and furniture plants remain important, while a growing share of capital is moving into particleboard, LVL, I-joists, prefabricated building elements and increasingly automated processing.

The investment pipeline is substantial for a country of fewer than three million people. A new €200 million particleboard project is planned near Marijampolė, VMG has established one of Europe's larger integrated engineered-wood sites in Akmenė, a nearly €40 million prefabricated timber plant is entering production in the same region, and another €35 million is going into highly automated firewood processing near Jonava. At existing plants, producers including Grigeo Baltwood continue to modernise equipment rather than simply add commodity capacity.

The result is an increasingly unusual position in the European wood market: Lithuania is building industrial capacity for a construction market much larger than its own.