We aim to be our customers’ preferred partner in developing sustainable business. To achieve this, we have consistently followed our strategy, the core of which is to be a local operator and serve our customers with sustainable hygiene solutions that are produced locally, using renewable Northern wood as our main raw material sustainably and efficiently. We continuously work to improve our industrial and material efficiency and our mills’ environmental performance to offer our customers the best possible product solutions. In our operations, we promote diversity and culture that encourages good performance so that our tight and competent team of inspired Metsä Tissue employees is ready to support our customers, in every situation.
We look to the future with confidence. Although the instability of the past few years has challenged the tissue paper industry just like many other operators, we continued to systematically invest in developing and renewing our operations because investments make our strategic choices tangible. Among other things, we aim for fully fossil free mills by 2030. To promote this target, we are investing in our mills’ energy efficiency and an increasingly broader use of fresh fibre as our main raw material. One of our steps forward in this respect is the transition from lignite to wood pellets that was carried out during the year at our Kreuzau mill in Germany as a result of systematic development and piloting efforts.
To boost the environmental and energy efficiency of our production, we launched an expansion and modernisation investment at our Mariestad tissue paper mill in Sweden. The design criteria included improved energy efficiency, emissions reductions, and better noise and odour control, in addition to world-class production efficiency. If realised, our planned tissue paper mill in Goole in the UK, which is now in the pre-engineering stage, will combine Finnish sustainable fresh fibre raw material with efficient local production close to the end-users and significantly reduce tissue paper product imports to the UK and Ireland. These investments promote our target of being an even stronger local operator.
When a user chooses Metsä Tissue’s household paper towels or toilet papers at our customers’ stores or dry their hands with our hand towels at their workplace, many important actions have already been taken to ensure sustainable operations. We will continue this systematic work also in the years to come.
I would like to thank you, our valuable customers and partners, for your cooperation and partnership this year. Let’s head together into the New Year and make it even better!
Esa Kaikkonen
CEO
Metsä Tissue