Helsinki, Finland, 27 January 2011 -- Stora Enso Wood Products is continuing to implement its Building Solutions strategy by constructing a cross-laminated timber (CLT) production unit at Ybbs sawmill in Austria. The EUR 23 million project will commence in the first quarter of 2011 and is expected to be completed during the third quarter of 2012.
“This investment, together with the existing CLT production unit at Bad St. Leonhard in Austria and the recently acquired building element producer Eridomic Oy in Finland, will provide a strong basis for further growth in Building Solutions. As our third investment in the past few months, it is an important milestone in increasing the share of higher value-added businesses in Wood Products' portfolio,” said Hannu Kasurinen, executive vice president, Wood Products.
“The European CLT market has been growing by almost 20% per year over the past decade, and we expect the demand of CLT-based solutions to continue increasing rapidly. We want to grow with our customers in our established markets, single-family housing in Central and Western Europe. We also see good prospects for CLT-based multi-storey buildings, where wood has traditionally had marginal market share. A good example of this is the on-going eight-storey building project in London,” Kasurinen said.
Stora Enso is currently developing a CLT-based building system primarily for urban multi-storey construction. CLT elements comprise multiple cross-laminated layers of timber. CLT is climate-friendly and easier and quicker to assemble than competing materials. With high structural strength, individually prefabricated CLT elements are also suitable for office, industrial, and commercial buildings, and other more demanding types of construction. CLT can be combined with any other building material, enabling great flexibility in design, style and architecture.
The acquisition of Finnish market leader Eridomic, which has a strong position in special roof elements and large wall elements, gives Stora Enso exceptional engineering competencies and a valuable customer base. “We plan to develop Eridomic's existing core business and bring in our CLT-based building system as a new business,” Kasurinen said.
The Ybbs sawmill is ideally located for the new CLT unit as it offers efficient and optimized raw material flow and excellent logistic connections to markets. The new production unit, with annual capacity of 63,500 cubic meters of cross-laminated timber, will employ 59 people when fully operational.
Stora Enso is a global paper, packaging, and wood products company producing newsprint and book paper, magazine paper, fine paper, consumer board, industrial packaging and wood products. The Group is a world leader in forest industry sustainability. Stora Enso is listed in the Dow Jones Sustainability Index and the FTSE4Good Index. Stora Enso employs some 27,000 people worldwide, and had sales in 2009 amounting to EUR 8.9 billion. Stora Enso shares are listed on NASDAQ OMX Helsinki (STEAV, STERV) and Stockholm (STE A, STE R). In addition, the shares are traded in the USA as ADRs (SEOAY) in the International OTCQX over-the-counter market.
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