Home / Environment / BrewDog's 'Lost Forest' Project Ends in Humiliation and Abandoned Saplings
BrewDog's 'Lost Forest' Project Ends in Humiliation and Abandoned Saplings
10 Oct
Summary
- BrewDog's ambitious 'Lost Forest' project to plant hundreds of thousands of trees fails spectacularly
- Over 50% of the 500,000 trees planted in 2023 died within a year
- BrewDog forced to sell the 9,142-acre Kinrara estate, ending the controversial project
In 2021, BrewDog's CEO James Watt made bold claims about the company's plans to plant hundreds of thousands of trees in the Scottish Highlands and become 'carbon negative'. However, as of October 2025, the 'Lost Forest' project has ended in a spectacular failure.
The grand plan for the 9,142-acre Kinrara estate was to create the UK's largest native woodland and peatland restoration project. But the reality has been far from the ambitious vision. By September 2023, up to 56% of the Scots pine planted - around 93,000 trees - were already dead, along with 43,000 oak and other broadleaves. In total, BrewDog and its partners planted 500,000 trees in 2023, and at least 50% of them had died by the following spring.
The company blamed the high mortality rate on extreme weather conditions, but experts argue that basic errors in the planting process, such as using mechanical diggers to prepare the soil, were the real culprits. The project's failure has led to the sale of the Kinrara estate, marking the end of one of the most ignominious chapters in BrewDog's 18-year history.
The collapse of the 'Lost Forest' has left a trail of destruction, with the jobs of estate workers lost and the native wildlife potentially harmed by the high deer fences erected during BrewDog's stewardship. The company's grand environmental promises have been exposed as nothing more than a public relations stunt, leaving a cautionary tale for others who may attempt similar ambitious green projects without the necessary expertise and planning.
