Stora Enso Has Announced That The Renovation Of The Oulu Mill in Finland, With An Investment Of Almost €1 Billion, Has Been Completed And Put Into Operation On Schedule.

Stora Enso has announced that the renovation of the Oulu Mill in Finland, with an investment of almost €1 billion, has been completed and put into operation on schedule.
With an annual capacity of 750,000 tonnes for the production of yellow-core white and coated bovine cards based on high-quality fibers, the new line will target frozen/refrigerated/dried food and beverage clusters, primarily for customers in Europe and North America, and will work with production sites including the Beihai plant in China to meet global customer needs.

The Oulu plant is expected to break even with earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortisation (EBITDA) by the end of 2025 and reach full production in 2027, with annual sales of €800 million.

Renewable packaging materials are Stora Enso's largest growth area today. In 2022, the Group decided to convert the plant's idle paper machines into a highly flexible consumer board production line to further strengthen its customer service capabilities in the fast-growing yellow-core white card and coated kraft card segments, providing strong support for the overall strategic layout.

Hans Sohlström

President and CEO of Stora Enso Group

The new production line will be the most modern and cost-effective in Europe, and the Oulu plant will be Stora Enso's largest production site – a comprehensive gigafactory focused on the packaging of the future with flexible production configurations. This will significantly enhance our profitability and market competitiveness in the consumer and containerboard segments, and will also help optimize the capacity allocation of our other production sites, such as unlocking profitable growth opportunities for liquid packaging board at the Skoghall plant in Sweden.

The annual wood consumption of the Oulu mill will increase by around 1 million cubic metres compared to before the renovation of the project, to 3.5 million cubic metres per year. The acquisition of the Junnikkala sawmill will also support the Oulu mill in terms of long-term cost-effectiveness and security of supply for the raw materials, mainly from locally sustainably managed forests and pulp from the Enocell mill in Finland and Veracel in Brazil.