Forest products company Metsä Group announced Thursday that its Metsä Fibre division has decided to construct a new bioproduct mill in Kemi, an investment valued at 1.6 billion euros. The construction phase will take approximately two and a half years, and the mill is scheduled for completion during the third quarter of 2023.
The construction plan represents the largest investment ever made by the Finnish forest industry in Finland.
The new mill will replace current Metsä Group pulp production in Kemi and will be the largest forest-sector production facility in the northern hemisphere. The Kemi bioproduct mill is designed to produce some 1.5 million tonnes of softwood and hardwood pulp per year, as well as other bioproducts.
It will also generate 2.0 TWh of renewable electricity per year, equivalent to the annual electrical heating requirements of over 100,000 single-family homes. Most of the some 7.6 million cubic metres of wood the mill will use is planned to be procured from Finland.
Metsä Group says that the new Kemi mill will create around 1,500 new jobs across its entire direct value chain in Finland and increase the annual value of Finland’s exports by approximately half a billion euros.