BrewDog sold highland estate for knockdown price after abandoning reforestation plans | BrewDog

Self-styled “punk” beer company BrewDog has sold its Highland property for a bargain price after abandoning efforts to plant Scotland’s “biggest ever forest” there.

BrewDog co-founder James Watt has claimed the Lost Forest project at Kinrara in the Cairngorms national park will cover an “astonishing area” and capture tens of millions of tonnes of CO2 over its lifetime.

The brewing company paid £8.5 million for the land in 2020. Watt said it would showcase the company’s efforts to make Brewdog carbon neutral by planting millions of trees, restoring degraded peatlands and promoting ecotourism.

But after Watt was replaced as chief executive of BrewDog in October last year, Kinrara was sold for an undisclosed price to “regenerative capitalist” carbon investment company Oxygen Conservation, with the company reporting a loss of £37 million.

Oxygen Savings exploited a controversial loophole in Scotland’s land registration rules to prevent the price from being made public without a fee, claiming the brewer wanted privacy.

But land register records seen by the Guardian show Oxygen Conservation paid £8.85 million for Kinrara; That’s significantly more than BrewDog paid five years ago. But taking inflation into account and excluding legal and consultant costs, the property was expected to be worth around £11.3 million in real terms by now.

Analysis of the prices paid by Oxygen Conservation for two other major sporting venues in Scotland points to success in the Kinrara deal.

Kinrara cost £2,351 per hectare in October 2025, while Oxygen Conservation paid £4,687 per hectare for the nearby 6,080 hectare Dorback estate in December 2024 and £3,086 per hectare each for Blackburn & Hartsgarth’s 4,681 hectares near Langholm on the Borders in April 2023.

Official records show BrewDog also transferred at least £4.8 million worth of valuable carbon credits at Kinrara in its deal with Oxygen Conservation; This meant that Brewdog was unable to make a profit on these investments.

The sale included hundreds of hectares of woodland creation and peatland restoration projects initiated by BrewDog and paid for mostly by public grants approved by the UK’s carbon code system.

They were awarded “pending regulatory units” (PIUs) under the carbon code in 2023.

PIUs measure the amount of carbon dioxide expected to be captured by new woodland or restored peatland. When woodland matures or peat regenerates, PUBs are converted into full carbon credits, which can be much more valuable.

The sale included 130,000 PUBs of woodland worth at least £3.5 million and 46,500 PUBs of peatland worth around £1.2 million, as well as early approval of hundreds of other hectares of woodland to receive PUB certification. In addition, Oxygen Conservation expects to add approximately another 100,000 PUB from a second woodland project currently under development.

In 2024, woodland PUBs sold for around £27 and peatlands for around £25.

Rich Stockdale, founder of Oxygen Conservation, believes that once PUBs are converted into full carbon credits, their value will increase significantly and generate a significant profit for his business. Last year the company sold forestry carbon credits for £125 each.

A spokesman for Oxygen Conservation said: “We provide Registers Scotland with all the information required to complete the title registration in accordance with the law. Beyond this, transaction values ​​and contract terms are confidential.”

BrewDog declined to comment. On Monday it was revealed that a US firm had paid £33 million for the brewery assets, but to the dismay of company staff and small investors the deal meant the loss of 38 pubs and around 500 jobs.

Land reform experts said Kinrara’s price tag could be further evidence that the market for Highland properties, focused primarily on carbon credits, is slowing.

Asset management company Aberdeen was forced to reduce the price of Far Ralia, near Newtonmore, which one of its clients bought for £7.5 million in 2021, to earn carbon credits by planting up to 1.5 million trees.

His purchase of Far Ralia, just a few kilometers from Kinrara, has become a lightning rod for anger at a new generation of “green landowners” buying property to earn carbon credits.

But Far Ralia was put back on the market in July 2024 for £12 million after its client, an investment trust, was hit by a collapse in property prices and rising costs.

It remains unsold and its price has recently fallen by almost half to bids of over £6.9 million. Aberdeen has raised at least £2.56 million in public funds to plant around 1.2 million native trees. It sparked criticism about its methodology and claims that many trees fail to grow.

The discounted price valuation for Far Ralia includes the promise that around 330,000 PIUs on the land are close to approval, raising suspicions that the carbon credit market is in trouble.

Josh Doble, director of policy and advocacy at Community Land Scotland, which campaigns for land tenure reform, said: “Once these projects are monetized through carbon credits, the profits are retained by corporate landowners who plan to sell within a few years.

“The liability and risk will then pass to the next owner. This seems like a clear case of exploitative, short-term land ownership. If these corporate projects have such serious questions about the long-term benefits for local people and the wider economy, why is the government pouring millions of pounds into private landowners through subsidies?”

“These woodland subsidies have a vital role in ecological restoration, but they need to be weighted towards collaborative, multi-owner projects involving local rural development and community or charitable projects.”