Stora Enso is underlining its commitment to its timber business with further major investment scheduled for its sawmill operations in Finland, the Baltic and Russia.

Deputy chief executive officer Björn Hägglund discussed the company’s plans at a special briefing recently for leading UK customers at the Finnish embassy in London.

He said that the company is focusing increasingly on added value and further processed timber products and upgrading its mills accordingly.

“The growth in softwood consumption world wide is expected to increase only at 1-2% per annum. However, there is evidence of much faster growth in further processed goods and engineered timber products, even up to 15%.”

Among the company’s investment projects, it will invest €19.8m at its Varkaus mill to modernise log handling and sawing lines. And next year it will build an entirely new further processing line with annual capacity of 100,000m3. At its Veitsiluoto mill it is spending €2.6 m to “improve flexibility and widen the product range”.

Following its approved takeover of Estonia-based AS Sylvester, Mr Hägglund added, Stora Enso has formed a new Baltic Production Group. “We are investing €30m at the existing mills to improve production efficiency and increase further processing capacity and are building a new mill in Lithuania.”

&#8220It becomes clear our future growth plans are based on expansion in eastern Europe and Russia”

Stora Enso deputy chief executive Björn Hägglund

He said the Sylvester acquisition also “offers significant synergy potential in procurement, management, marketing, forest operations and logistics”.

Putting the company’ s developments in the Baltic alongside its plans to build two mills in Russia in Karelia and the Novgorod regions, Mr Hägglund said: “it becomes clear our future growth plans are based on expansion in eastern Europe and Russia”.

In terms of timber products, he added that the company is focusing increasingly on “more ingenious raw material solutions”, such as finger-jointed and laminated timber for wood windows, and “high quality components” for the joinery industry generally.

Stora Enso’s production capacity is now 6.7 million m3 of sawn wood products, of which 2.4 million m3 is classed as value added.