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.
