Stora Enso is planning to close a corrugated board plant in Holland and will shut another machine in Poland resulting in the reduction of 500,000 tonnes a year of corrugated board from the market.
The company blames overcapacity in the sector for the planned closure. President and CEO Annica Bresky says the closure “would not be proposed unless it was absolutely necessary for our long term competitiveness. We are at a crucial juncture in our strategy advancement and to further our market position and increased focus on capital allocation and decentralised empowerment is needed.”
The forest products company plans to close the De Hoop mill in the Netherlands which was acquired along with De Jong Packaging earlier this year and has capacity of 380,000tpa. It also plans to close down a containerboard line its Ostrolęka site on Poland. This is capable of 120,000tpa. The company also wants to close its Sunila pulp mill in Finland. This can produce 375,000tonnes of long fibre pulp amounting to 13% of group capacity.
Along with the closure of a sawmill in Estonia, the proposed changes could affect 1,150 employees before the end of the year.
The announcement of the shake up follows hard on the heels of news that Stora Enso was to invest in a new machine to produce consumer carton board at its Oulu mill in Finland. This will be capable of 750,000tpa when it starts up in 2025. While there is over capacity in container board and corrugated, the consumer board market is showing strong growth and will reach 11 million tonnes annually by 2030.
This will be driven by both the rise in interest in circular packaging and the shift away from the use of plastics in packaging.
The site has been a centre for production of Lumi woodfree coated paper, ceasing in 2020. It already runs a machine for kraftliner production.
Stora Enso was last week told that an EU investigation into manipulation of the pulp market was being wound up. The antitrust investigation involved Södra, UPM, Metsä Fibre and Mercer Group as well as Stora. The closure of the investigation is not a finding that the conduct in question complies with EU competition rules according to the European Commission.
