Finnish companies Metsä Group and VR are intensifying their cooperation on sustainability in logistics and have agreed a new joint target to halve emissions from transport covered by their cooperation by 2030. In addition, Metsä Group aims to transfer some of its current road transports to railways. For Metsä Group, the measures would represent a total emission reduction of around 14,000 tCO2e per year, which is equivalent to more than 25,000 average lorry journeys.
Metsä Board and its associated company Metsä Fibre, both part of Metsä Group, will launch pre-engineering phases for three major investments. All three investments will further develop the competitiveness of pulp and energy production for both companies, and move them towards fossil-free production.
The Metsä Group’s bioproduct mill start-up will begin in mid-August, and pulp deliveries from the new mill to customers will begin in early September. The current pulp mill at Äänekoski – the company announced – will be shut down once the bioproduct mill starts up.
Bioeconomy is economic growth and new green jobs. A new evidence comes from Finland. The Research Institute of the Finnish Economy (ETLA) studied the impact of Metsä Group’s bioproduct mill being constructed in Äänekoski in terms of revenue, value added and employment. The impact of the largest investment to date in the history of Finnish forest industry has significant repercussions in the economy during both the construction and the operation of the mill.
According to ETLA’s calculations, the 1.2 billion euro investment in the bioproduct mill will increase the revenue of companies operating in Finland by around 2.4 billion euro at the construction stage, and it will generate value added that will be directly reflected in economic growth in the amount of nearly 1 billion euro during 2015–2018. The annual employment effects arising from construction during 2016 and 2017 total nearly 4,000 person-years when the effects on the value chain and consumption are included in the calculation. This equals 0.16 per cent of the total employed workforce in Finland.
Metsä Group, the Port of Helsinki and the City of Helsinki have reached an agreement on the use of the harbour and the lease of an area for a terminal building of around 30,000 square metres. The terminal will serve as an export warehouse for the bioproduct mill and will be completed before the mill is inaugurated in the third quarter of 2017.
The European Investment Bank (EIB) and Metsäliitto Cooperative signed last Friday a EUR 75 million loan agreement for the construction of a new large-scale bio-product mill in Finland (Äänekoski). The financing will be submitted for backing by the EU budget guarantee under the European Fund for Strategic Investments (EFSI).
IL BIOECONOMISTA 