Feb 05, 2009. /Lesprom.com/. Forest products group Stora Enso Oyj said its net losses swelled to Euro 655 million in the 4Q, due mainly to weak demand and production cuts. Net loss in October through December widened from a net loss of Euro 60 million a year earlier, the forest products company said. Revenue fell by more than 12 percent to Euro 2.6 billion from Euro 2.9 billion a year earlier. Stora Enso repeated it plans to temporarily lay off staff and cut jobs. "The drop in customer demand in the last quarter of 2008 turned out to be as severe as we expected. We also responded as planned by aggressively curtailing our production by 15 to 30% of capacity," CEO Jouko Karvinen said. The forest products group had earlier issued several profit warnings and warned of plant closures, production cuts and layoffs. It said 2009 would also be demanding and that the cuts would continue. "The operating environment for at least the early part of 2009 will be as challenging as at the end of 2008." Karvinen said. "We continue to focus on pricing quality and cash flow. We will only manufacture when customers buy our product, rather than building our inventory." Stora Enso is one of the world's largest forest product companies making magazine paper, newsprint, fine paper, pulp and packaging boards. It employs 31,700 — down from 44 thousand a year ago, due mainly to mill closures. The group was formed in a 1998 merger between Finland's Enso and Stora of Sweden. The Finnish government is the major shareholder with more than 10 %of the stock.