Metsä Board at a glance
What are Metsä Board's main products and their typical end uses?
Metsä Board produces premium lightweight folding boxboards and white kraftliners made from fresh fibre. All products are recyclable and are primarily used in consumer and retail packaging applications.
Around 60% of Metsä Board’s folding boxboards are used in food and food service packaging, 15% in healthcare packaging, 20% in other consumer goods packaging and 5% in graphical end uses. White kraftliners are mainly used in retail packaging applications such as point-of-sale displays, shelf-ready packaging, and boxes for fresh fruit and vegetables.
Who are Metsä Board's customers?
In folding boxboard, Metsä Board’s main customers are brand owners, converters and merchants. Approximately 40% of sales are based on annual contracts.
In white kraftliners, the main customers are corrugated packaging manufacturers. Contract durations are typically around 3–4 months.
Who are Metsä Board's main competitors?
Metsä Board’s main competitors are other producers of high-quality paperboards for consumer packaging applications. In Europe, Metsä Board is the leading producer of folding boxboard and white kraftliners, and globally the largest producer of coated white kraftliners.
In many applications, Metsä Board’s fresh fibre paperboards compete with recycled grades such as WLC and, increasingly, with rigid plastic packaging, creating opportunities for material substitution and market share gains.
How is Metsä Board’s production and supply chain structured?
Metsä Board operates seven production units, six in Finland and one in Sweden, strategically located close to northern wood fibre, its main raw material.
The company’s production system is highly integrated with high pulp and energy self-sufficiency, and a largely fossil-free energy base. Through its mills, logistics network, ports and warehouses, Metsä Board serves customers globally with reliable deliveries and strong supply chain agility.
Markets
What are Metsä Board's main market areas?
Europe and North America are Metsä Board’s main markets, with the United States being the company’s largest single-country market. Asia's importance is driven more by pulp, as the region is a key end market for Metsä Fibre's market pulp.
Europe remains Metsä Board’s largest market and the primary focus for paperboard growth. The company aims to strengthen its position particularly through deeper customer relationships, innovative packaging solutions and enhanced service offering.
In North America, Metsä Board sees attractive growth opportunities in premium consumer packaging segments. The company has established long-standing customer relationships in the region, where customers value the lightweight, high-performance characteristics of Metsä Board's paperboards, which provide a yield advantage compared with many local grades.
In selected emerging markets, growth is driven by global customer relationships and increasing demand for high-quality, sustainable packaging solutions.
What are the main growth drivers in the global packaging market and especially in fresh fibre paperboards?
Packaging demand continues to grow, supported by population growth, urbanisation and rising living standards. Within packaging, fresh fibre paperboards benefit from several structural growth drivers.
Consumer preferences increasingly favour renewable and recyclable materials over plastic. Many global brand owners have committed to improving recyclability, reducing plastic use and lowering Scope 3 emissions, making packaging a key enabler of their sustainability targets.
Regulation is also supporting the transition towards more circular packaging solutions. In Europe, the implementation of PPWR and growing emphasis on recyclability, packaging optimisation and EPR fees are expected to further strengthen the competitiveness of fresh fibre paperboard packaging.
Strengths and competitiveness
What are the main benefits of Metsä Board's paperboards to customers?
Metsä Board’s paperboards are lightweight yet stiff, providing a yield advantage compared with many alternative paperboard grades. Their production is material-efficient, requiring less raw material, water and energy. The main raw material is renewable and traceable wood fibre, and all Metsä Board’s paperboards are recyclable.
Case studies show that Metsä Board’s paperboards can significantly reduce packaging carbon footprints compared with many alternative materials, mainly through lightweighting and the use of fossil-free energy.
Fresh fibre paperboards are well suited for demanding end uses such as food and healthcare packaging, where purity, safety and product protection are critical requirements. They can be used in direct food contact applications without substances that could migrate into food.
In addition, Metsä Board’s paperboards offer excellent printability and runnability.
Why is BCTMP important for Metsä Board’s paperboards?
BCTMP (bleached chemi-thermomechanical pulp) is a high-yield pulp produced by combining mechanical and chemical pulping processes. In Metsä Board's folding boxboard, BCTMP is used in the middle layer of the board structure, while the outer layers are made of chemical pulp.
The use of BCTMP gives folding boxboard an excellent combination of low weight and high stiffness, enabling similar packaging performance to heavier solid bleached board (SBB) grades while using less material.
BCTMP also uses significantly less wood than chemical pulp because a larger share of the wood fibre remains in the final product. Producing one tonne of chemical pulp typically requires around 5 m³ of wood, whereas BCTMP can be produced with roughly half that amount, making it a resource-efficient raw material.
Why doesn't Metsä Board use recycled fibre in its paperboard production?
The end use of a packaging material largely determines the type of raw material that can be used in its production. In food, pharmaceutical and many consumer packaging applications, purity, safety and product performance are essential, making fresh fibre the preferred choice.
Fresh fibre is also stronger than recycled fibre, allowing the same packaging performance with less material. As a result, Metsä Board's lightweight paperboards can have a lower carbon footprint than many alternative packaging materials, including heavier recycled fibre-based boards. This advantage is driven by lightweighting together with the company's high share of fossil-free energy.
In addition, recycled fibre is most efficiently utilised close to where it is collected. Metsä Board's mills are located in Northern Europe, where population density is low and large volumes of recovered paper are not readily available. The company instead utilises renewable and traceable fresh wood fibre sourced from sustainably managed Nordic forests.
Metsä Board's business is built on circular economy principles. Its paperboards are recyclable and provide high-quality raw material for subsequent recycling cycles, while most grades are also compostable. More than 99% of production side streams are recycled, and water is circulated efficiently throughout the production process, reducing resource use and environmental impact.
Strategy and financial targets
What are the key drivers of Metsä Board’s profitability?
Metsä Board's profitability is primarily influenced by paperboard delivery volumes, selling prices, mill utilisation rates, input costs (especially wood, pulp and energy), foreign exchange rates and the performance of its associated company Metsä Fibre.
What are the strategic priorities of Metsä Board’s business areas?
Metsä Board focuses on three core business areas: consumer packaging (folding boxboard), retail packaging (white kraftliners) and market pulp.
Consumer packaging is the company’s largest business area and primary growth focus. Metsä Board aims to grow both organically and through selected strategic opportunities by strengthening its position in premium consumer packaging.
In retail packaging, the focus is on improving profitability and value creation through customer partnerships, product development and operational efficiency.
In market pulp, the objective is to gradually reduce Metsä Board’s net market pulp position and exposure to market pulp price fluctuations, thereby improving the stability and predictability of cash flow while maintaining the benefits of pulp self-sufficiency.
What are Metsä Board’s long-term financial ambitions?
Metsä Board’s current priority is to improve profitability and returns through the successful execution of its Lead the Pack strategy. A key part of this is the ongoing transformation programme, which targets an annual EBITDA improvement of EUR 200
Over the longer term, Metsä Board aims to grow as a leading premium packaging solutions company and a preferred partner for premium consumer brand packaging. The company targets annual revenue growth of more than 4% in consumer packaging, a comparable return on capital employed (ROCE) above 8% in 2027–2028 and above 12% from 2029 onwards.
Maintaining a strong balance sheet remains a key priority, with a target net debt-to-comparable EBITDA ratio below 2.5. Metsä Board’s dividend policy is to distribute at least 50% of the financial year’s result over time, taking into account investment and development needs.
How is Metsä Board creating shareholder value following its recent investment cycle?
In recent years, Metsä Board has invested heavily in increasing capacity, improving mill competitiveness and advancing the transition towards fossil-free energy. The focus has now shifted from major investments to maximising the value of these investments through higher capacity utilisation, improved operational efficiency and more disciplined capital allocation.
At the same time, Metsä Board continues to pursue organic growth by strengthening customer relationships, expanding in selected market segments and improving its service offering.
A key part of the value creation plan is the ongoing transformation programme, which targets an annual EBITDA improvement of EUR 200 million by the end of 2027.
Metsä Board’s long-term dividend policy is to distribute at least 50% of the financial year's result, taking into account future investment and development needs. No dividend was proposed for 2025 due to the loss-making result.
Metsä Board as part of Metsä Group
What is Metsä Board's relationship with Metsä Group and Metsä Fibre?
Metsä Board is part of Metsä Group and benefits from its unique value chain, which spans from northern forests to high-quality end products. The parent company, Metsäliitto Cooperative, Metsä Board’s largest shareholder, is owned by approximately 90,000 Finnish forest owners. Through Metsä Group, Metsä Board has access to a reliable supply of traceable northern wood fibre, its most important raw material.
Metsä Board owns 24.9% of Metsä Fibre, a leading producer of softwood market pulp. In addition to its own pulp and BCTMP production, Metsä Board purchases pulp from Metsä Fibre and benefits from high pulp self-sufficiency through the partnership.
Metsä Fibre’s financial performance impacts Metsä Board through its 24.9% ownership share, as Metsä Board’s EBITDA includes its share of Metsä Fibre’s net result and the company receives dividends from Metsä Fibre. Maintaining pulp self-sufficiency remains an important strategic objective, supporting consistent product quality and reducing exposure to external pulp market fluctuations.
How big is Metsä Board's annual pulp position?
Metsä Board produces both chemical pulp and BCTMP (bleached chemi-thermomechanical pulp), primarily for its own board production. The company has annual chemical pulp capacity of approximately 910,000 tonnes and BCTMP capacity of approximately 750,000 tonnes. In addition, Metsä Board owns 24.9% of Metsä Fibre, whose annual chemical pulp capacity is approximately 4 million tonnes, of which roughly 80% is softwood pulp and 20% hardwood pulp.
Taking into account Metsä Board's own pulp production and consumption as well as its ownership in Metsä Fibre, the company has a calculated net pulp surplus position of approximately 0.5-1.0 million tonnes per year. A 10% increase (decrease) in market pulp prices would have an approximately EUR 40 million positive (negative) impact on Metsä Board's annual operating result.