Metsä Group plans to invest Euro 15 million in Joutseno pulp mill in Finland

Jun 21, 2012. /Lesprom Network/. Metsä Group will invest Euro 15 million in developing the production process at the Joutseno pulp mill. With Metsä Group’s product and process development work, the world’s largest single-line softwood pulp mill, located in Joutseno, Finland, will adopt a new pulp manufacturing process – polysulphide cooking. Polysulphide technology has never been applied on such a large scale before, as the company said in a press release received by Lesprom Network. With the investment, Metsä Group will launch a new kind of softwood pulp on the market, which will improve customers’ cost-efficiency and the technical properties of the final products: paper and board. “The investment will strengthen Metsä Group's position in the global softwood pulp market further, as we will be launching a unique product that improves the competitiveness of our customers. At the same time, we will increase the production capacity of our mill by almost 10% and improve the efficiency of production. The investment is proof of the vitality of the Finnish forest industry,” says Ismo Nousiainen, Senior Vice President, Production at Metsä Fibre. The main equipment will be supplied by Andritz Oy. Construction will begin in the autumn 2012, and the process will be commissioned in the summer 2013. The Joutseno pulp mill is currently implementing a gasification plant investment worth approximately Euro 20 million, and once it is complete in the summer 2012, the mill will be the first carbon dioxide-neutral pulp mill in Finland. This means that the mill will not need any external energy during normal operation but will rather produce all its own energy using wood-based fuels. Metsä Group produces high-quality products mainly from renewable Nordic wood. The Group’s business areas are tissue and cooking papers, board and paper, pulp, wood products as well as wood supply.