Self-proclaimed “punk” brewing company BrewDog has sold its Highland estate for a bargain price after abandoning efforts to plant Scotland’s “largest ever forest” there.
BrewDog co-founder James Watt said its Lost Forest project in Kinrara, in the Cairngorms National Park, would cover an “amazing area” and capture tens of millions of tonnes of CO2 over its lifetime.
The brewing company paid £8.5 million 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 peatlands and promoting ecotourism.
But in October last year Kinrara was sold for an undisclosed price to “regenerative capitalist” carbon investment firm Oxygen Conservation after Watt was replaced as chief executive of BrewDog and posted losses of £37m.
Oxygen Conservation used a controversial loophole in Scotland’s land registration rules to prevent the price from being publicly available without a fee, claiming the brewer wanted confidentiality.
However, land registration records seen by The Guardian show Oxygen Conservation paid £8.85 million for Kinrara, a fraction more than BrewDog paid for it five years ago. But the estate would have been expected to be worth around £11.3m in real terms by now, taking inflation into account and excluding the legal and consultancy costs involved.
Analysis of the prices paid by Oxygen Conservation for its two other major Scottish sporting properties points to the success of the Kinrara deal.
While Kinrara cost £2,351 per hectare in October 2025, Oxygen Conservation paid £4,687 per hectare for the nearby 6,080 hectare Dorback estate in December 2024 and £3,086 for each of the 4,681 hectare Blackburn & Hartsgarth estate near Langholm in the Borders in April 2023.
Official records show BrewDog also handed over valuable carbon credits in Kinrara worth at least £4.8 million in its deal with Oxygen Conservation, which meant Brewdog failed to reap the benefits of those investments.
The sale included hundreds of hectares of woodland creation and peatland restoration projects initiated by BrewDog and largely funded by public grants that had been approved by the UK carbon code system.
In 2023, they were awarded “outstanding emission units” (PIUs) under the carbon code.
PIUs measure the amount of carbon dioxide that new forests or restored peatlands are expected to capture. Once the forest matures or peat is restored, PIUs become full carbon credits, which can be much more valuable.
The sale included 130,000 PIUs of woodland worth at least £3.5 million and 46,500 PIUs of peatlands worth approximately £1.2 million, as well as early approval for hundreds of hectares of other woodland which will also receive PIU certification. Additionally, Oxygen Conservation expects to add nearly 100,000 more PIUs from a second forestry project currently in development.
In 2024, forest UIPs sold for around £27 and peatland UIPs around £25.
Oxygen Conservation founder Rich Stockdale believes their value will increase significantly once PIUs are converted to full carbon credits, providing his business with a significant profit. The company sold forest carbon credits last year for £125 each.
A spokesperson for Oxygen Conservation said: “We provide Registries of Scotland with all the information necessary 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 that a US company had paid £33m for the brewery’s assets but, to the dismay of its staff and small investors, the deal meant the loss of 38 pubs and almost 500 jobs.
Land reform experts said Kinrara’s price tag could be further evidence that the property market in the Highlands, which mainly focuses on carbon credits, could be stagnant.
Asset management company Aberdeen has been forced to reduce the price of Far Ralia, near Newtonmore, which one of its clients bought in 2021 for £7.5 million, to earn carbon credits by planting up to 1.5 million trees.
His purchase of Far Ralia, just a few kilometers from Kinrara, became a lightning rod for anger at the new generation of absentee “green landowners” buying properties to earn carbon credits.
But after its client, an investment fund, was hit by a collapse in house prices and rising costs, Far Ralia was put back on the market for £12 million in July 2024.
It is still unsold and the price has recently been nearly halved to bids of over £6.9m. Aberdeen raised at least £2.56 million in public funding to plant around 1.2 million native trees, sparking criticism over its methodology and accusations that many trees were not growing.
Far Ralia’s downgraded valuation includes a promise that nearly 330,000 PIUs of the property are very close to being validated, raising suspicions that the carbon credit market is in trouble.
Josh Doble, policy and advocacy director at Community Land Scotland, which campaigns for land ownership reform, said: “Once these projects are monetised through carbon credits, the profits stay in the hands of corporate landowners who plan to sell them within a few years.
“The responsibility and risk will then pass to the next owner. This appears to be a clear case of short-term, extractive land ownership. If these corporate projects raise such serious questions about their long-term benefits for local people and the wider economy, why is the government funneling millions of pounds through subsidies to private landowners?
“These forest subsidies have a vital role to play in ecological restoration, but should be geared towards collaborative, multi-owner projects and community or charitable projects that integrate local rural development.”
