"The sale of our forest holdings in Latvia is a part of the group's focus on its core business. This can be seen as a natural continuation of the sale of our Estonian forest holdings implemented in June this year," Heikki Karhunen, Metsaliitto's director of wood supply for the Baltic countries said in a statement.

Sodra also bought the 5,000 hectares of forest that Metsaliitto sold in Estonia.

The price tag of the Latvian forestland was not revealed.

Nearly three million hectares of Latvian territory are covered in forestland. Half the forests are owned by the state and 43 percent are privately owned.

Metsaliitto is the tenth biggest forest industry group in the world. Its business focus is on wood supply, pulp and paper production, and wood-based products.

Sodra is a foresty group owned by its members and has more than two million hectares of forest in southern Sweden alone.

Its four business units focus on forestry management, pulp production, timber production and bio-fuel production.