Stora Enso will close down one paper machine at the Anjala site and consolidate book paper production on one PM, as announced. The company now finalised talks on the closure and announced the number of redundancies.
Stora Enso has completed negotiations concerning the permanent closure of one of its two paper machines at the Anjala mill in Finland. The closure of the publication paper machine, scheduled to take place in the fourth quarter of this year, will affect 89 people, 50 of whom will be made redundant, reports the company.
The Anjala mill houses two machines, which together can produce up to 435,000 tpy of coated and uncoated book paper, coated magazine paper and improved newsprint, and has 300 employees. Due to prevailing weak paper demand and high input costs, Stora Enso decided to concentrate all book paper production on one PM in Anjala and to shut down the other, announcing this step in April. This will reduce the site's capacity by 250,000 tpy and sales by €100m, according to the company. "With the remaining paper machine, the group will be able to continue producing its selection of book paper grades," said Hannu Kasurinen, EVP of the Packaging Materials division.
The Anjala mill was initially planned to be sold, together with the company's Hylte, Nymölla and Maxau mills. The planned sale was part of Stora Enso's strategy to withdraw from the printing and writing paper market, which it announced in March last year. The three other sites have already been sold, while the divestment process for Anjala was stopped and the site will now be kept within the group with one PM.
The Anjala mill is part of the integrated Anjalankoski site which also includes the Ingerois packaging and board plant. The Anjalankoski site is reported under Stora Enso's Packaging Materials division. Anjala was previously reported under the Paper division, which has was discontinued at the beginning of the year.
