Oct 21, 2005. /Lesprom Network/. Finnish president Tarja Halonen inaugurated M-real Corporation's new bleached chemi-thermomechanical pulp (BCTMP) mill in Kaskinen on 20 October 2005. This is the forest industry's largest capital expenditure project in Finland in recent years. The BCTMP mill that has now been completed is the world's most modern and has a production capacity of 300 000 tonnes per annum of the pulp required in M-real's fine paper and paperboard production. "The completion of the Kaskinen mill will bring M-real increased scope for improving its competitiveness and developing the quality of its products. Thanks to the BCTMP technology developed by M-real, we will be able to manufacture our products in a more environmentally sound and efficient way than ever before," said president and CEO Hannu Anttila, citing the main criteria for making the Kaskinen investment. M-real Corporation was the first producer in the world to introduce modern BCTMP manufacturing methods on a production scale. Following the start-up of the Kaskinen mill, the company will be the world's largest manufacturer of high-quality BCTMP grades of pulp. M-real's BCTMP pulps have a higher brightness than other mechanical pulps and give the papers and boards a higher bulk. This means that customers can use papers and boards in lower grammages, which saves costs without sacrificing printability. M-real's Joutseno BCTMP mill, which started up in 2001 and has an annual capacity of 250 000 tonnes of pulp, was the world's first mill based on this technology. Both the Kaskinen and Joutseno mills have been built using proprietary technology, which won the Finnish engineering award this year. The award is granted by The Finnish Association of Graduate Engineers TEK and Tekniska Föreningen i Finland TfiF (Finnish Technological Society). M-real is one of Europe’s leading suppliers of paperboard and related services, coated and uncoated fine paper and coated magazine paper. Its main market is Europe, but the products are sold worldwide. M-real focuses on four business areas: consumer packaging, publishing, commercial printing and office papers.