AWPPW: Ponderay Newsprint Labor Dispute Alert

Metsä Group has established a new innovation company, Metsä Spring Ltd. The company will, together with partner organisations, invest in new endeavours with the target to identify and develop new business opportunities in sustainable forest-based bioeconomy and circular economy. Niklas von Weymarn has been appointed CEO of the company. He transfers to Metsä Spring from the position of VP, Research in Metsä Fibre, also part of Metsä Group. The office of Metsä Spring is in the heart of the internationally-acknowledged Otaniemi innovation campus in Espoo, Finland. The establishment of the new innovation company does not affect the current research and development activities of Metsä Group’s current business areas. ”With the establishment of Metsä Spring, we want to create a new dimension to Metsä Group’s innovation activities and thereby participate more actively in the development of new business concepts in forest-based bioeconomy and circular economy. A large share of new ideas are generated outside our company and the new business concepts are increasingly developed in novel partnerships. The new innovation company enables Metsä Group to better take part in this activity,” says Metsä Group’s President and CEO and Metsä Spring’s Chairman of the Board Ilkka Hämälä. Click Read More below for additional information.

*Operating profit for January-June 2022 was SEK 3 984 million (January-June 2021: 1 747). Excluding the item affecting comparability of SEK +266 million, operating profit increased by SEK 1 972 million to SEK 3 719 million. This was due to price increases in every product area, while cost inflation was limited by our high level of wood and energy self-sufficiency. *Profit after tax for January-June amounted to SEK 3 125 million (1 373), which corresponds to earnings per share of SEK 19.3 (8.5). *A total of SEK 1 862 million of ordinary and extraordinary dividends was paid in April. Thanks to strong cash flow, net debt has decreased by roughly SEK 300 million since year-end.

The owner of the Androscoggin Mill announced Wednesday that it will not rebuild a wood pulp digester that exploded April 15 and will permanently shut down one paper machine idled by the blast. Alan Ulman, spokesman for Pixelle Specialty Solutions based in Pennsylvania, said the decision is part of its long-term strategy to continue manufacturing specialty papers on its other two machines and utilizing more than 250 full-time employees. About 177 jobs have been eliminated at the mill since the explosion, which halted manufacturing for eight days and initiated months of recovery and strategic planning to ensure the mill would operate successfully and competitively. The mill will continue using pulp sourced from other mills, including Maine-based facilities.