BrewDog sold highland estate for knockdown price after abandoning reforestation plans

The self-styled “punk” beer company BrewDog sold its Highland estate for a knockdown price after abandoning its efforts to plant Scotland’s “biggest ever forest” there.BrewDog’s co-founder James Watt claimed its Lost Forest project at Kinrara in the Cairngorms national park would cover a “staggering area” and capture tens of millions of tonnes of CO2 during its lifetime.The brewing company paid £8.5m for the estate in 2020. Watt said it would showcase the company’s efforts to make BrewDog carbon neutral by planting millions of trees, restoring degraded peatland and promoting ecotourism.But in October last year Kinrara was sold for an undisclosed price to the “regenerative capitalist” carbon investment firm Oxygen Conservation after Watt was replaced as BrewDog’s chief executive and it posted losses of £37m.Oxygen Conservation used a controversial loophole in Scotland’s land registration rules to avoid making the price publicly available without paying a fee, claiming the brewer wanted confidentiality.However, land registration records seen by the Guardian show that Oxygen Conservation paid £8.85m for Kinrara, a fraction more than BrewDog paid for it five years ago. But the estate would have been expected to be worth about £11.3m in real terms by now, taking account of inflation and excluding the legal and consultants’ costs involved.Analysis of the prices paid by Oxygen Conservation for its two other large Scottish sporting estates points to its success with the Kinrara deal.While Kinrara cost £2,351 per hectare in October 2025, Oxygen Conservation paid £4,687 per hectare for the 6,080-hectare Dorback estate nearby in December 2024 and £3,086 for each of Blackburn & Hartsgarth’s 4,681 hectares near Langholm in the Borders in April 2023.Official records show that BrewDog also handed over valuable carbon credits at Kinrara worth at least £4.8m in its deal with Oxygen Conservation, which meant BrewDog failed to realise the profits of those investments.The sale included hundreds of hectares of woodland creation and peatland restoration projects initiated by BrewDog and mostly paid for by public grants which had been given approval by the UK’s carbon code system.In 2023, they were awarded “pending issuance units” (PIUs) under the carbon code.James Watt, co-founder of BrewDog. Photograph: Murdo MacLeod/The GuardianPIUs measure the amount of carbon dioxide expected to be captured by new woodland or restored peatland. Once the woodland matures or the peat is restored, the PIUs are converted into full carbon credits, which can be much more valuable.The sale included 130,000 woodland PIUs worth at least £3.5m and 46,500 PIUs for peatland worth about £1.2m, as well as early approval for hundreds of hectares of other woodlands which will also receive PIU certification. In addition, Oxygen Conservation expects to add nearly 100,000 more PIUs from a second woodland project now under development.In 2024, woodland PIUs sold for about £27, and about £25 for peatland.Oxygen Conservation’s founder, Rich Stockdale, believes those will rise significantly in value once the PIUs are converted into full carbon credits, providing his business with a significant profit. The company sold woodland carbon credits last year for £125 each.A spokesperson for Oxygen Conservation said: “We provide Registers of Scotland with all information required to complete title registration in accordance with the law. Beyond that, transaction values and contract terms are confidential.”BrewDog declined to comment. On Monday it emerged a US firm had paid £33m for the brewery assets but to the dismay of its staff and small investors, the deal meant the loss of 38 pubs and nearly 500 jobs.The sale included the handing over of woodland PUIs worth at least £3.5m. Photograph: Murdo MacLeod/The GuardianLand reform experts said the price for Kinrara could be further evidence that the market for Highland estates which focus primarily on carbon credits could be stalling.The asset management firm Aberdeen has been forced to cut the price for Far Ralia near Newtonmore, which one of its clients bought in 2021 for £7.5m, in order to earn carbon credits by planting up to 1.5m trees.Its purchase of Far Ralia, only a few miles from Kinrara, became a lightning rod for anger over the new breed of absentee “green lairds” buying up estates to earn carbon credits.But after its client, an investment trust, was hit by a collapse in property prices and rising costs, Far Ralia was put back on the market for £12m in July 2024.It has still not sold and the price has recently been cut by nearly half to offers over £6.9m. Aberdeen raised at least £2.56m in public funding to plant about 1.2m native trees, sparking criticism about its methodology and allegations many trees failed to grow.The cut-price valuation for Far Ralia includes the promise that nearly 330,000 PIUs on the estate are very close to being validated, adding to suspicions the carbon credits market is in difficulty.Josh Doble, the director of policy and advocacy at Community Land Scotland, which campaigns for land ownership reform, said: “Once these projects are monetised through carbon credits, the profits are kept by corporate landowners who plan to sell in a few years.“The liability and risk will then shifts on to the next owner. This seems to be a clear case of extractive, short-term landownership. If these corporate projects have such serious questions over their long-term benefits for local people and the wider economy, why are the government funnelling millions of pounds through subsidies to private landowners?“These woodland subsidies have a vital role to play in ecological restoration, but they need to be weighted towards collaborative, multi-owner projects and community or charitable projects which embed local rural development.”