Nov 05, 2008. /Lesprom.com/. The poor availability of wood raw material at prices that are competitive for the mills has led to production curtailments at Metsä-Botnia's Finnish mills and eroded their profitability, Botnia said. The available supply of wood will not permit the mills to produce cost-competitively at full capacity in 2009. During the last two years there have been continuous production curtailments and extraordinary shutdowns at all Botnia's Finnish mills. The lack of availability of competitively-priced wood raw material will necessitate even more severe production cutbacks in the future, and spreading them across all Botnia's Finnish mills would significantly weaken the profitability of all the mills and the company itself. The company is therefore considering a temporary shutdown of production at its mill at Kaskinen during the 1Q 2009. The closure of the mill is also an alternative under consideration. The company is commencing statutory cooperation negotiations with the employees accordingly. “The availability of the competitively-priced hardwood that Kaskinen needs will become particularly problematic in the future. Kaskinen is the oldest of Botnia's mills as far as technology is concerned, and it has the highest production costs. It has also been using greater quantities of expensive imported wood than our other mills. In concentrating our production curtailment measures on Kaskinen we are trying to secure the profitability of our other mills and the whole company in the future, too,” says Botnia CEO Ilkka Hämälä.