Metsä Fibre, part of Metsä Group, will build a new bioproduct mill in Kemi, Finland. The value of the investment is EUR 1.6 billion and it is the largest investment ever made by the Finnish forest industry in Finland. Source: Timberbiz
The construction phase will take approximately two and a half years, and the mill will be completed during the third quarter of 2023.
In addition to the Kemi bioproduct mill, Metsä Group is currently building the world’s most modern sawmill in Rauma, Finland. With these investments, Metsä Group meets the needs of forest owners and its customers even better than before across the entire forest industry value chain and will play a significant role in combating climate change.
The Kemi bioproduct mill will increase the annual value of Finland’s exports by approximately EUR 0.5billion, and the positive annual income effect in Finland from wood sales and domestic purchases will also be approximately EUR 0.5 billion.
The new bioproduct mill will secure the 250 jobs in the existing pulp mill in Kemi for decades to come. All in all, around 500 people will work at Kemi mill site.
The Kemi bioproduct mill will create around 1,500 new jobs across its entire direct value chain in Finland, most of them in wood sourcing, with 2500 people in the direct value chain of the Kemi bioproduct mill in Finland.
In the supplementary budget for 2020, the Finnish government allocated funding for investments in the Northern Finland transport network.The commitment of the public sector to infrastructure development that supports the mill operations is very important.
Wood required by the mill will be procured from sustainably managed forests, and the origin of the wood is always known. The Kemi bioproduct mill will use approximately 7.6 million cubic metres of pulpwood a year, which is 4.5 million cubic metres more than the current pulp mill in Kemi.
Wood is planned to be mainly from Finland. The wood procurement for the Kemi mill will expand to Sweden in the future, from where it is estimated that approximately one million cubic meters of wood will be procured annually.
The Kemi bioproduct mill will produce some 1.5 million tonnes of softwood and hardwood pulp per year, as well as many other bioproducts. It will also produce 2.0 TWh of renewable electricity per year, which equals to roughly 2.5% of Finnish total electricity production.
The new mill will replace the current pulp mill in Kemi, which has reached the end of its lifespan.
