Stora Enso has announced an investment of €23 million in its Varkaus containerboard mill.
The investment will enable the company to expand its product range and boost the site’s production capacity by approximately 10%, it said in a statement.
It will also see the company expand its capacity to use recycled fibre.
The company has commenced preparatory work on the investment, which is expected to be completed by the end of 2022.
The preparatory phase includes, among others, environmental impact assessment (EIA) and the updating of the environmental permit.
The investment will proceed while the site is in normal operation, with the final phase of the project executed during the annual maintenance shutdown in late autumn next year.
'Production Efficiency'
Jarkko Tehomaa, Varkaus Packaging Board Mill Director at Stora Enso, added, "The investment will also improve production efficiency through technical changes in both the board machine and the pulp mill drying machine.
"Also, our flexibility to offer different product grades to customers improves and the capacity of the site increases slightly.”
The production facility in Varkaus produces unbleached softwood pulp and brown and white top container board for corrugated boards, i.e. kraft liners.
In addition to unbleached softwood pulp, the paper mill currently uses about one-third of the total board packaging recycled in Finland as its raw material, the company added.
The facility is part of the Stora Enso Packaging Materials Division, which has extensive know-how in utilising wood fibre in every stage of production – from product design to finished products and recycling.
Sustainability Goals
Driving and enabling the recycling of paperboard packaging products is one of the key sustainability goals of the company, and investments to improve recycling capacity are a concrete way to support this goal.
The Stora Enso Varkaus site, with an annual production capacity of 450,000 tonnes, employs approximately 400 people.
The site also manufactures pulp, sawn timber, and veneer wood.
In September, the company said it is progressing on its journey of transformation into a renewable materials growth company.
© 2021 European Supermarket Magazine. Article by Dayeeta Das. For more Packaging news, click here. Click to sign up to ESM: European Supermarket Magazine.
