Komatsu Forest Brand Guidelines: Umeå, Valmet Red & a Japanese Parent

Four owners in four decades.

Komatsu Forest is a Swedish company with a Japanese parent. Its roots are in Umeå, on the coast of northern Sweden, where Komatsu dates the start of the business to 1961 and a company called Umeå Mekaniska. Forest Machine Magazine, reporting on a visit to the factory in December 2024, gives the same founding year and the same chain of owners: Volvo BM from 1976, Valmet from 1986 and Partek from 1997, when the business became Partek Forest.

One of those names lasted longer than the ownership behind it. The Umeå harvesters and forwarders carried the Valmet name well into the Komatsu era: in January 2011 the timber-trade news service Lesprom reported Komatsu Forest’s announcement that its forest machines were changing their name from Valmet to Komatsu, and that their distinctive red colour would remain. The chief executive at the time, Toshio Miyake, said in the same release that the machines were now full members of the Komatsu family.

Komatsu arrived in 2004. Komatsu says it entered the forestry industry that year by establishing Komatsu Forest AB, and the Swedish company says it has been part of the Komatsu Group since then. In 2012 the Canadian trade magazine Wood Business described Komatsu Forest AB as a wholly owned subsidiary of Komatsu Ltd., based in Umeå and specialised in harvesters, forwarders and feller bunchers. Komatsu itself was founded in 1921 in the Japanese city of Komatsu, Forest Machine Magazine noted; the parent’s own story is told in our Komatsu guide.

A cut-to-length range and a run of purchases.

The range covers the main machines of cut-to-length logging, in which trees are felled, delimbed and cut to length in the forest. Komatsu Forest’s 2026 website lists wheeled harvesters numbered from the 901 to the 951, forwarders from the 825TX to the 898, its own harvester heads, forestry excavators and tracked feller bunchers. The 2011 renaming came with two new harvesters, the Komatsu 931.1 and 911.5, Lesprom reported, and in August 2026 the company presented an updated generation of harvesters and forwarders, according to its newsroom.

Growth since 2004 has come partly through purchases. In November 2012 Wood Business reported that Komatsu Forest would acquire the Swedish harvester-head maker Log Max and its United States sales company, while Eco Log, part of the same selling group, would stay independent. Forest Machine Magazine listed later additions in 2024: Quadco and Southstar in 2018, TimberPro in 2019 and Bracke Forest in 2022.

The newest is in Sweden. In March 2026 iVT International reported that Komatsu had announced the acquisition of Malwa Forest, a Swedish maker specialising in compact cut-to-length machines for thinning; Komatsu Forest’s newsroom says the purchase was completed on 1 April 2026.

The business also reaches well beyond Sweden. Komatsu’s own history adds a Brazilian line: in 2004, following its purchase of Partek’s forest machine business, the operation in Brazil also became Komatsu Forest. Today the Umeå company’s website points visitors to local sites for countries and regions including Australia, Brazil, Finland, France, Germany, North America, Norway and the United Kingdom, and Komatsu says about 1,650 people work within Komatsu Forest, out of a group of more than 60,000.

How the category presents itself.

Forestry machine makers sell to a small, expert audience: logging contractors, forest companies and the operators who spend long shifts in the cab. Their imagery follows the work. Harvesters and forwarders are photographed in snow, in dense spruce stands and on soft ground, often from low angles that show the crane, the wheels and the load together, and many makers give equal space to the view from the operator’s seat: the cab interior, the controls and the screens of the measuring and control systems.

Paint does much of the branding. Machines are usually finished in a single strong colour, whether yellow, green or red, and makers tend to keep it through mergers and new names. When Komatsu Forest’s machines dropped the Valmet name in 2011, the company said their red would stay, the timber-trade news service Lesprom reported.

Many of these brands are tied to particular towns. In Finland and Sweden the factory and the head office often sit in the same place, sometimes in the community where the business began: Ponsse still builds every machine in Vieremä, in Northern Savonia, and Komatsu Forest has both its headquarters and its manufacturing in Umeå, in northern Sweden, according to the companies. Founding stories, early machines and local workshops feature prominently in their own histories.

The trade meets at working demonstrations rather than in showrooms. Fairs such as FinnMetko in Finland and Elmia Wood in Sweden bring makers, contractors and machines together, and makers time launches and road shows around them: Ponsse says almost 30,000 visitors came to Metko in 2008, and that an international tour in 2007 ended at the Elmia fair in Jönköping. This guide sets out what can be checked about each brand: who founded it, who owns it and where its machines are made.

A new factory on the edge of Umeå.

Production has stayed in Umeå. In 2021 Komatsu Forest commissioned a new factory at Klockarbäcken, on the outskirts of the city, with nearly 40,000 square metres of space on two production floors, a six-storey office building and a single production line, according to the company. It says both headquarters and manufacturing are in Umeå, and that the building was built to the Swedish Miljöbyggnad Guld environmental standard. The company also says the factory roof carries one of the largest solar parks in the Nordic region. Komatsu says the Umeå plant makes the wheeled forestry machines and harvester heads. Visiting in 2024, Forest Machine Magazine found the factory larger than its writer had expected and reported that 770 of the company’s 1,650 employees were based there.

The brand now speaks in its parent’s voice. Komatsu Forest’s website uses the group’s line “Creating value together,” explains “The Komatsu Way,” the written statement of values that all employees in the Komatsu Group are expected to pass on, and runs a series of stories under the heading “Gentle giants,” including one on Komatsu forestry machines working for the island government in Tenerife since 2022. It tells the group’s founding story, of a copper mine near the Japanese city of Komatsu, rather than Umeå’s.

The visual link to the past is the paint. When the Valmet name went in 2011, the company said the red would stay, Lesprom reported, and the Swedish company still sells its machines under the Komatsu name from the same city where Umeå Mekaniska started.

For a design guide, Komatsu Forest shows how a regional maker can take on a global group name while keeping one inherited colour. Compare Komatsu, its Japanese parent, and Ponsse, the forest machine maker of Vieremä in Finland. For this guide we use a forest red, charcoal and snow with a sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

Keep Komatsu Forest’s identity on hand — save it to a board in the Made Good inspiration library.