Nordic forest companies to invest USD 3 billion
Forest companies in Northern Europe have announced plans to investment three billion dollars in 2014 in attempt to move beyond mostly producing newsprint and commodity packaging grades.
Just over the past few months, there have been a number of announcements in investments made by forest companies in Finland, Norway and Sweden totaling close to three billion dollars.
The primarily end-products will be softwood market pulp and virgin fiber-based container board, but major investments are also being consider in increasing the utilization of forest biomass for energy on a larger scale. Although the investment decisions have not been finalized for all projects, these ruminations are a sign that the forest industry in this part of the world sees the future in a much brighter light than just a few years ago, according to WRQ.
In addition to the investments in the pulp and paper industry, there has also been an announcement that the Swedish forest owner federation Sodra, together with the Norwegian energy company Statkraft, Europe’s largest producer of renewable energy, intends to establish an biofuel conglomerate at the site of the now closed pulpmill in Tofte, Norway.
In Finland, Metsä Fiber has plans to invest 1,5 billion dollars in a plant that will produce softwood pulp, renewable bioenergy and what the company categorizes as various bio-materials.
These recent developments in the Nordic countries may very well be the beginning of the biggest transformation of the softwood fiber-based forest industry we have seen in decades, not only in Northern Europe but in other regions of the world as well where coniferous forests is the dominant forest-type, ends WRQ.