Paper Excellence is Signatory of COP27 Action Declaration

UPM supports Finnish universities and makes a contribution of 40,000 face masks as part of the company’s Biofore Share and Care programme. The masks will be handed to the students in the Faculty of Agriculture and Forestry at the University of Helsinki, the School of Chemical Engineering at Aalto University, the Faculty of Science and Engineering at Åbo Akademi University and Chemical Engineering students at Lappeenranta University of Technology. “We support our stakeholders in making their everyday life during the Covid-19 pandemic as safe as possible. Students are important to us and interaction is a significant part of studies. The masks have been in short supply as the need for face masks in different fields has increased. Therefore, we have delivered 500,000 surgical face masks to our key stakeholders all around the world. The safety of face-to-face courses is important to students who are beginning their studies or taking laboratory courses, for example. That’s where the masks come in handy,” Pirkko Harrela, Executive Vice President, Stakeholder Relations at UPM says.

HEINZEL GROUP recorded a respectable result in the challenging environ-ment of 2020 and created a good basis for further growth after completely freeing itself from debt. Sebastian Heinzel joins the management as Chief Strategy Officer with immediate effect. HEINZEL GROUP increased production in both the paper and pulp segments in the 2020 financial year, with total production rising to 1,607,030 metric tons in 2020. The growth in paper volume is at-tributable to the first full year of operation of the PM3 in Pöls, which specializes in low-grammage kraft paper, and the very good performance of the PM10 in Laakirchen, which produced more con-tainerboard than in the previous year. Total sales volume amounted to 3.7 million metric tons and was slightly lower than in 2019 due to the corona pandemic. Coupled with lower market prices, HEINZEL GROUP’s net sales consequently declined to EUR 1,611.7 million. Although lower wood prices and large-scale savings measures had a positive effect, HEINZEL GROUP’s EBITDA, at EUR 126.0 million, fell to the level of 2017. The group’s EBIT decreased to EUR 57.7 million and net profit for the year to EUR 39.9 million. Against this backdrop it is all the more remarkable that HEINZEL GROUP was able to completely free itself from debt and increase the equity ratio to 59.2%.

A smoldering fire at KapStone caused in an unknown amount of damage to mill’s biggest paper machine Tuesday. Crews from Longview Fire and Cowlitz 2 Fire & Rescue responded to a call of a smoldering fire at about 7:15 a.m. Tuesday morning at Paper Machine No. 10. By the time firefighters arrived, sprinklers had already doused much of the flames, but there was a small amount of smoldering from the burning machine, said Captain Randy Bradshaw of Longview Fire. Firefighters worked with KapStone crews to identify hot spots underneath the hood of the machine and on the roof, Bradshaw said. KapStone’s own emergency response team used the company’s hoses to put out the hot spots, Bradshaw said. Click Read More below for more of the story.