Reforestation Seedling Nursery
The industry — Forest nurseries and gathering of forest products
Base industry report for 1132 →- Establishments · CanadaA
- 129
- Under 10 employeesA
- 71%
- Establishments · USA
- 184
- Employment · USA
- 983
- Payroll · USA
- $52M
Of 129 Canadian establishments with employees, 71% have fewer than ten — mostly small operators.
Entry signal — what decides who wins here
One thing must be trueEntry turns on a single condition that can be named and tested before much is spent. Clear it and this becomes an execution question; fail it and no amount of operating skill helps.
Take share rather than ride the market. Demand is flat, seasonal or policy-driven, so growth has to come out of a competitor. That is possible and it is slower, and it rewards an operator who can wait.
Measured, not forecast: the share of US establishments opening in one year that were still active later. It counts good operators and bad ones together, which is exactly why it is the honest answer to “what are the odds”. It is for the whole sector rather than this market, and the ten-year figure comes from an older cohort because no younger one has reached ten years.
This is not a probability of success, and it is not a verdict on you. No survival probability is published per market, and inventing one would be worse than saying so. What the bar reads is how much of the outcome sits inside an operator's control: green means the hurdles are ones a better operator clears, red means the binding constraint is capital, an asset or a permission rather than execution. Someone arriving with an advantage this screen did not assume can win a market shown in red.
Companies named in this market · 3
The binding constraint — growth quality
The pre-screen called this low-capital and under-served, and the first half survives: a container nursery is greenhouses, a cold store and seasonal labour, not a mill. The second half does not. Seedling demand is a legal by-product of logging. In British Columbia tenure holders are required by law to regenerate the areas they harvest [A], so a nursery's order book is next year's cutblocks, sown a season or more ahead under contract to the same licensees who are curtailing mills. That book is shrinking. The province planted more than 280 million trees in 2024 [A]; planting is expected to fall to 238 million in 2025 and 226 million in 2026, a third consecutive decline that tracks the drop in harvest [B]. The obvious replacement demand — burned forest — has no payer: the nursery associations put replanting 15% of the 2023–24 burn at more than 880 million extra seedlings in British Columbia alone, capacity that does not exist and that waits on government funding [B]. Meanwhile one operator, PRT, grows over 600 million seedlings a year across 28 nurseries [B], against a Canadian industry the trade association puts at about C$256M. The 129 establishments are unusually top-heavy for a farm code — 22% have twenty or more employees. An entrant would be adding capacity to a shrinking, contract-bound volume already served at scale. Gathering of wild forest products, the other half of this code, was not examined.
Seedlings are a perishable, site-matched product grown to order for a particular licensee's blocks, so nurseries compete for the sowing requests of the licensees and government programmes in their own forest region. Quebec (44) and British Columbia (37) hold most of the 129 establishments because that is where the planting obligation is.
Who you would be competing with
The operators already at scale here, and whoever is buying these businesses. In most of these industries the competition an entrant meets is local, so this is who sets the terms rather than a list of everyone in the trade.
Financials & market size — sourced
Figures that came from a filing, a results release or reputable reporting, each carrying its evidence tier.
The field
Every operator named on this record, and what each one discloses. A private single-site operator discloses nothing, which is the normal case — the listed consolidators are the only window in.
Competitor set · 5 named · 0 disclose revenue
| Name | Revenue | Share | Note |
|---|---|---|---|
| PRT Growing ServicesB | not disclosed | — | Privately held; no revenue published and none sourced. 27 nurseries, 14 seed orchards, about half a billion seedlings a year on its own account. Ownership was not sourced for this record. |
| The tenure holders who buy the seedlingsA | not disclosed | — | Both the customers and the reason the demand exists: British Columbia requires them by law to regenerate what they harvest, so the order book is next year's cutblocks. They are also the ones curtailing mills. |
| The 129 Canadian establishmentsA | not disclosed | — | 72 with one to four employees, 29 with twenty or more — unusually top-heavy for a farm code, which is what growing to a contract does. Quebec 44, British Columbia 37. |
| US forest nurseries and gatherersA | not disclosed | — | 184 establishments, 983 employees, US$52.2M of payroll (County Business Patterns, 2022). The same industry, the same shape. |
| Provincial nursery programmesUNVERIFIED | not disclosed | — | Quebec has the largest establishment count in the country and its reforestation programme was not opened for this record, so how much of that province's volume is publicly grown is unknown. |
Nobody here publishes revenue. The market is not sized for that reason — an estimate built on nothing would only look like knowledge.
Evidence
Evidence. The business and US counts are statistical-agency figures [A], as are the 2024 planting total and the statement of the legal duty to regenerate, both from the B.C. Ministry of Forests [A]. The planting trajectory, the wildfire-backlog estimate and PRT's scale were read in the full Business in Vancouver articles of 18 December 2024 and 13 August 2025 [B]. The December 2024 article carried the province's projection of 291 million trees for 2024 and 233 million for 2025; the outturn was more than 280 million in 2024 and the later reporting puts 2025 at 238 million, so the outturn is on the record and the projection is not. No source was reached for the year the British Columbia duty began, or for the share of harvested area restocked by planting rather than natural regeneration, so neither is on the record. The C$256M industry figure is an association's own estimate relayed by the press [C] and PRT's revenue is private. Not sourced: any nursery's margins or contract terms, Quebec's planting programme, and the entire gathering half of the code (wild mushrooms, boughs, moss). Added in the completion pass: PRT's own website (read September 2026) gives 27 nurseries, 14 seed orchards, about half a billion seedlings a year and over six billion since 1971, and its history page dates the PRT–IFCO combination to 2023. These are the company's own claims about itself, tiered B rather than A, and they sit below the 28 nurseries and 600 million a year the trade press reported in December 2024 — a discrepancy left on the record rather than reconciled, because no filing exists to settle it. PRT's ownership and revenue were not found and are not stated. Still not sourced: any nursery's margins or contract terms, any seedling price series, Quebec's planting programme and how much of it is publicly grown, and the entire gathering half of the code (wild mushrooms, boughs, moss). Beyond the counts and the planting totals the argument is UNVERIFIED analyst judgment, as is the cut factor.
Where the industry talks
The associations, forums and events where people in this trade actually talk shop — where to listen before entering, and where the first customers are found. Each link was opened on the date shown.
Forest seedling nurseries, their clients and suppliers, and provincial and federal government reps; annual conference and AGM each September.
44th conference and AGM, 22-24 September 2026, Prince George; presentations, supplier displays, field trips and awards.
Contractors in reforestation, silviculture, nursery production and wildfire work; annual conference and a Business & Market Summit.
Founded 1908; member body for foresters and forest technologists with 18 sections; publishes The Forestry Chronicle; 2026 national conference and 118th AGM.
Registered members per the board's statistics line. Tree planters, foremen and silviculture company owners; annual bid-results threads; visible to Canadian IPs only.
US Forest Service journal on nursery practice and reforestation, on the RNGR site; latest issue Vol. 68 No. 1 (2025).
Est. 1937; tree improvement, seed management and the Tree Seed Working Group; biennial Forest Genetics conference (Ottawa, August 2025).
Silviculture Magazine's site is dead (last issue Fall 2013). Canadian Forest Industries (woodbusiness.ca) did not respond. The WFCA conference site returned 404 at its root.
Software serving this industry
Vertical software markets filed along the same branch of NAICS — who sells to these businesses, and who an entrant would have to displace.