Businesses thrive in the nation's forests
Forestry England have a diverse range of recreation businesses operating in the nation's forests. From cafes to ice cream and burger mobile catering, gift shops to bike hire and Segways. Team building activities, external training courses and paintballing to seasonal business such as Christmas tree sales. The variety and quality of the businesses we work with help to make the nation's forests special places to visit.
Explore current opportunities below or get in touch to propose something new.
Current Opportunities:
Delamere Forest Concession Opportunity
Forestry England invite expressions of interest and feedback for a future concession opportunity at the Delamere Forest site. Forestry England are currently researching potential commercial uses for the current bike hire building on site. We are seeking interest and feedback from the wider market as to potential appropriate activities/services that would be a cohesive fit with the forestry environment and our visitor profile at the Delamere site.
Forestry England are currently scoping our requirements to ensure that the specification of requirements and future tender documentation accurately reflects the current offerings of the market.
We intend to publish a procurement exercise for this requirement in early Autumn 2025.
We invite companies from the market to register their interest in this future requirement and provide feedback on potential clarification on the feasibility of our emerging plans. Suppliers should register their interest by no later than Thursday 21st August 2025 by emailing Emily Coffin - Commercial.services@forestryengland.uk .
Haldon Forest Park Bike Hire Concession
Forestry England is seeking expressions of interest from operators wishing to deliver bike hire at the Haldon Forest Park Visitor hub.
Haldon Forest Park is only 15 minutes from Exeter and Newton Abbot, just off the A38 and 45 minutes from Plymouth.
The site https://www.forestryengland.uk/haldon-forest-park attracts approximately 500,000 visits annually. Cycle hire will be for the family/leisure/mountain bike market, there is also the opportunity to run a bike workshop and small bike retail offer.
Haldon Forest Park has a great reputation for its offerings to the mountain biking community, it hosts over 22km of dedicated, offical cycle routes, catering to all demographics, skills and abilties. Additionally, there is a dedicated skills area and a pump track. From novices to advanced enthusiasts, there really is something for everyone.
The bike hire will be required to operate out of temporary buildings for the duration of the lease.
Interested parties are asked to confirm if they would like to run a workshop operation in addition to the bike hire.
Currently we anticipate the lease period being a total of 7 years (5+1+1). The draft lease Heads of Terms will be available in the tender documents to be published September 2025.
The total value of the lease opportunity over the term will be in the region of £700,000. We expect to award the lease in December 2025 for the concession to be operational by 1st April 2026.
Expressions of interest should be submitted via email to commercial.services@forestryengland.uk by 19th September 2025.
Expressions of interest are invited for commercial marketing partnerships
We are continually looking for commercial marketing partnerships and sponsorship that meet our marketing objectives.
We have a range of events that can be sponsored and we are happy to talk to companies and organisations about innovative ways to explain who we are and what we do and promote our sites to their customers.
Our objectives are:
- Inform people about our work
- Raise awareness of our sites, events, activities and membership
- Raise awareness of the importance of trees, woods and forests
We have recently worked with companies to promote our forest and activities via their websites and apps. We would be interested in hearing about other similar opportunities.
Expressions of interest in this work can be made at any time by contacting marketing@forestryengland.uk
