Metsä Group Starts Kemi Bioproduct Mill

The largest investment of the forest industry in Finland—the new Kemi bioproduct mill and paperboard mill expansion—came into operation as planned on Wednesday, September 20, 2023. The operations will start department by department. Pulp deliveries from the new mill to customers will begin in October 2023.

The Kemi bioproduct mill produces 1.5 million tonnes of softwood and hardwood pulp annually. It uses zero fossil fuels and will be completely waste-free by 2030. Featuring cutting-edge technology, the mill operates a fully-fledged circular economy, as all the wood raw material and production side streams are efficiently used for various bioproducts and bioenergy. For example, the mill produces tall oil and turpentine, as well as two terawatt hours of renewable electricity per year, which is equivalent to the annual consumption of 100,000 electrically heated single-family homes. This accounts for approximately 2.5% of Finland’s total electricity production.

The bioproduct mill will use 7.6 million cubic meters of wood per year, 4.5 million cubic meters more than the old mill. The wood supply will be based on regenerative forestry with the aim of achieving a verifiable improvement in the state of nature by 2030.

Metsä Group’s completed, ongoing and planned investments since 2015 total approximately €7 billion.