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Stora Enso is planning to centralise pine timber sawing from its Veitsiluoto sawmill in Kemi, Finland, to the company’s other sawmills in Northern Finland, particularly Oulu and Kalajoki. Source: Timberbiz The planned change is part of Stora Enso’s ongoing efforts to improve efficiency, profitability, and competitiveness in line with its strategy. If implemented, the plan would result in the permanent closure of the Veitsiluoto sawmill. Stora Enso Veitsiluoto Oy and Stora Enso Oyj will initiate change negotiations concerning the planned permanent discontinuation of production at the Veitsiluoto sawmill. The negotiations cover all employees at the sawmill, approximately 60 people, and are expected to last three weeks. According to the current plan, the sawmill would not restart production in October 2026 after the ongoing temporary curtailment. No decisions on the planned closure or possible personnel reductions will be made before the negotiations have been concluded. “In recent years, Stora Enso has expanded its sawmilling operations in northern Finland to deliver high-quality sawn goods for demanding applications, complementing our expanding high-quality board production. “However, Veitsiluoto has operated for over 100 years, and continuing production there would require significant investments. At the same time, our modern Oulu sawmill is ramping up. We are committed to conducting the negotiations in a responsible and constructive manner and supporting our personnel throughout the process,” said Matti Lielahti, Head of Stora Enso Business Unit Oulu. Stora Enso Business Unit Oulu employs approximately 900 people across its board mill, port operations and sawmill in Oulu, and its sawmills in Veitsiluoto, Oulainen and Kalajoki. If implemented, the planned closure would only have a minor impact on the business unit’s wood consumption.

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Metsä is investing in a new production line for Muoto food packaging in Äänekoski, Finland. As for Metsä’s other innovation projects, the development of the lignin product and carbon capture is continuing as planned, but the conditions for the Kuura textile fibre project are estimated to have changed significantly due to the global market situation. Source: Timberbiz Investment in Metsa’s Kuura textile fibre mill will not proceed. In the target market for Kuura textile fibres – that is, man-made cellulosic fibres – significant global overproduction has emerged in a short period, which has undermined the competitiveness of high-quality and responsibly manufactured fibres. The greatest change has taken place in Asia, where significant new capacity has emerged in recent years. Currently, too few customers are willing to pay a premium for responsibly produced materials. Due to the market changes, the investment in the Kuura textile fibre mill in Kemi, Finland, will not proceed. The Kuura project is not estimated to have the prerequisites to continue in its current form. However, the expertise developed in the field of textile fibres is valuable, and the company is exploring options for utilising it. Developed by Metsä, Muoto is a fibre-based packaging solution produced from Metsä’s own wood fibres. The products can be shaped to meet a variety of customer needs. “We’ve developed a competitive product and production concept for Muoto packaging that responds to the growing demand for fossil-free packaging solutions. Muoto supports Metsä’s ambition to develop new packaging innovations in collaboration with companies in the packaging value chain,” said Niklas von Weymarn, CEO of the innovation company Metsä Spring. Muoto products are made directly from wet wood pulp, without any intermediate steps. Muoto combines stiffness and functionality with a light weight, making it suitable for applications such as demanding serving and food packaging. “There’s a strong market trend to find alternatives to plastic in certain product groups, which opens a significant market niche for the Muoto business. Muoto products also meet the strict requirements of the EU’s recent Packaging and Packaging Waste Regulation. Legislation is expected to give a boost to the product’s chances of success,” von Weymarn said. The new Muoto fibre packaging production line will be located within the Metsä mill site in Äänekoski, next to the existing Muoto demo plant, and it will start up in 2028. The investment will be made in Äänekoski instead of Rauma, as previously planned, based on the infrastructure of the mill site, the existing production line and the costs of the investment. The value of the investment is approximately EUR 25 million, and the nominal capacity of the production line will be more than 100 million products per year.  

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Wood is widely regarded as the building material of the future. But turning renewable raw materials into high-rises that can genuinely bear structural loads takes more than good timber. It takes adhesives that deliver on what architecture promises. Source: Timberbiz In the Medienhafen district of Düsseldorf, Germany there is a building that speaks a different language: The Cradle is an office building with a striking façade of timber diamond shapes, where wood is not just decoration but structure. Framework. And right at its heart, invisible yet indispensable: adhesive – “the unsung hero,” as Marcel Blodau calls it. Mr Blodau works in product development at Henkel Adhesive Technologies, focusing on Engineered Wood, structural timber construction. “We’re not talking about chairs or tables. We’re talking about structures that carry loads: walls, ceilings, high-rises,” he said, explaining why the right adhesive is so critical: in cross laminated timber (CLT), layers of wood are stacked at 90-degree angles and bonded with adhesive. Cross-bonded layers compensate for the natural weak points of timber and achieve strengths comparable to concrete and steel. “That is only possible through the combination of adhesive and wood,“ Mr Blodau said. Mr Blodau has been part of the team since 2020. While the market has long been dominated by melamine-urea-formaldehyde (MUF) adhesives, Henkel focuses on polyurethane, a technology that contains no water and no solvents and can be processed at room temperature. “Polyurethane in structural timber construction is a comparatively young technology. We are at the beginning of a shift from concrete to more sustainable wood as building material – and that is exactly what makes it so exciting,” Mr Blodau said. What sets timber construction apart from steel and concrete is not just the material itself. It is the way buildings can be constructed. Timber components are manufactured in climate-controlled facilities, year-round, regardless of weather. When concrete cannot cure in winter, a conventional construction site comes to a standstill. In mass timber construction, production continues. “A finished wall element arrives on site and just needs the door fitted,” Mr Blodau said. That means shorter, more reliable build times and fewer trucks on the road. Claudia Meckel, who leads global product development for structural timber construction at Henkel, sees a further advantage. “Construction teams can prefabricate in a heated factory instead of standing on a building site in freezing temperatures. That is better for the workforce, for build quality and for planning reliability alike,” she said. There is a personal dimension to it as well: the prepolymer on which Henkel’s timber adhesives are based – the chemical building block that gives the adhesive its bonding properties was developed by her father, a chemist who spent many years in fundamental research. “It is wonderful to see what has come out of so much research and development work,” she said. Henkel’s ambition does not stop at the laboratory. The assembly time/press time ratio – the relationship between how long an adhesive remains workable and how long it needs under pressure to cure – shows how far product development reaches: directly into customers’ production processes. “If the adhesive has a long open time but a short press time, that increases the output of the entire production line,” Ms Meckel said. There is one question that comes to mind immediately: Don’t timber buildings burn far more quickly? Ms Meckel shakes her head. Steel softens under extreme heat and loses its structural integrity. Timber, by contrast, chars on the outside, forming a protective layer while retaining its load-bearing capacity in the core for a long time. For tall buildings, adhesives are needed that actively support this behaviour. In a fire, an adhesive must not melt. If it does, the char layer falls away, fresh wood is exposed and the fire gains strength again. “Using phosphorus compounds, the adhesive forms a stable char layer,” Ms Meckel said. “This allows timber structures to remain stable, enables safe evacuation and is a key enabler for high rise timber construction.” Henkel’s position as a pioneer in this field is clear from the fact that its internal research division began working on the topic as early as 2017 and long before EUROCODE 5: The European standard that for the first time sets binding fire protection requirements for adhesives in structural timber construction. “The goal was clear: develop adhesives that make it possible to build tall buildings from wood,” Mr Blodau said. Henkel is the only supplier worldwide offering a fire-retardant polyurethane adhesive, LOCTITE HB X, that meets both European and American certification standards. Building on this success, Henkel introduced the new fire-retardant LOCTITE HB XE product line in 2025. The new generation adhesive delivers outstanding performance in meeting the latest EUROCODE 5 requirements while also offering enhanced processing and application properties for customers. Sustainability in timber construction operates on several levels: CO₂, recycling, health, certification. The visible dimension: Wood stores CO₂ and replaces energy-intensive concrete. The less obvious one: the bonding agents themselves. But Henkel goes a step further. The answer is mass balance – a certified accounting method that tracks the share of sustainable raw materials through the production chain and it starts with used cooking oil. Used cooking oil is processed into bio-naphtha, which is fed together with conventional naphtha, into the start of the chemical production chain. Through a certified mass-balance accounting system, the improved CO₂ footprint can be documented and passed along the entire supply chain as a certificate. The result: the LOCTITE HB S ECO line – the first polyurethane adhesive for structural timber construction certified under ISCC Plus, an internationally recognized sustainability standard. “With this, we can reduce the CO₂ footprint per kilogram of adhesive by up to 60 per cent,” Ms Meckel said. Mr Blodau said that Henkel is currently the only supplier in the polyurethane space with this certification. Jeanine Wojciechowski has been responsible for Henkel’s European business in structural timber construction since September 2025. And is still captivated by what she sees every day. “Every time I walk into the production facility, […]

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