NORPAC Announces Price Increase on Newsprint

The world’s first autonomously operated logyard cranes have been successfully lifted up at Metsä Fibre’s bioproduct mill in Kemi, Finland. Supplied by international technology group ANDRITZ, the delivery includes two 2 x 25-ton cranes on a 540 m long runway with a storage capacity of approximately 120,000 m3. The cranes will handle approximately 7.6 million m3 wood/year shipped on trucks and trains as well as handling log storage and wood feeding to the pulping process. The cranes feature the latest in Artificial Intelligence, thus optimizing log handling, minimizing wood losses and securing environmentally friendly and cost-effective operation when compared to traditional log-handling solutions. The fully autonomous logyard cranes featuring Artificial Intelligence are part of the comprehensive ANDRITZ portfolio of sustainable solutions and products that help customers reaching their goals with regard to environmental protection and sustainability

The Finnish Paperworkers’ Union has today informed UPM that their strike at UPM’s Finnish mills will be extended by three weeks until 12 March 2022, unless new agreements are reached before that. The Paperworkers’ Union’s strike at UPM Pulp, UPM Biofuels, UPM Communication Papers, UPM Specialty Papers and UPM Raflatac units in Finland started 1 January 2022. Currently, approximately 200 union members are working in tasks critical to society, such as power plants and water treatment facilities. The union simultaneously informed UPM that it is ready to negotiate with UPM businesses. UPM received an invitation to negotiations concerning UPM Pulp on Monday 7 February. The invitation indicated that the negotiations would be carried out with the CLA advisory board of the union. The board includes members of other forest products companies which means that discussions could be conducted on a very general level. Due to anti-trust compliance, genuine negotiations on UPM’s business-specific issues could not be conducted.

Heinzel Holding GmbH and Paracel S.A. jointly announce that Heinzel has entered into an investment agreement to become the strategic equity investor in Paracel, an afforestation and pulp mill project in Paraguay, South America. Paracel has now received equity commitments from a group of Paraguayan and European business families, with Heinzel's investment completing the needed strategic equity for the project. Heinzel will hold 25% of Paracel's shares at project completion. Paracel is planning to produce 1.8 million metric tons of eucalyptus pulp per year in Concepción in northern Paraguay, with forestry assets of more than 180,000 hectares of land owned by the company. Since the start of the project in late 2018, the pioneering project has passed important milestones: Paracel has already planted more than16,000 hectares of forestry, completed the design of the pulp mill, received the construction permit and completed the required environmental and social impact assessments. It has started significant groundworks on the mill site and kicked off social programs and conservation projects for native forests. As one of the world's major afforestation projects it has also completed documentation for the carbon sequestration effect of planting more than one hundred million trees.