Metsä Group procures its wood from commercial forests

Commercial forest means that trees have been harvested from the forest for people's use in the past. In the forest, for example, selective logging has been done, in which case only some of the trees have been removed. In forests with such a management history, individual old trees may still be found, which cannot necessarily be recognized as old by their appearance. Such individual trees can be found everywhere in Finnish forests. In Northern Finland, we use stricter limits than forest certification for old forest definitions, which we updated in 2022.

"We review our wood procurement principles regularly and refine them as more information becomes available. The activities, especially in the forests of northern Finland, are of great interest to our stakeholders, and we have an active discussion with them on the subject. Only wood from commercial forests is relevant for Metsä Group's wood procurement," says Juha Jumppanen, EVP, Metsä Forest.

We estimate that, for example, around 60% of the wood used at the Kemi bioproduct mill, which started up in September, comes from thinnings. Logs from regeneration fellings go to sawn timber and bind carbon for a long time. The goal of forest management also in Northern Finland's forests is to grow as much timber logs as possible. While managing the forests towards the timber log phase, pulpwood, bark and logging residues are obtained and they are used in the bioproduct mill in a resource-efficient manner.

In our wood procurement, we comply with laws, good forest management recommendations and the rules of PEFC and FSC certification.

Our forest experts make sure at each wood trade that the felling does not endanger nature values. Comprehensive public forest data, our own local knowledge and maps are used as tools to support decision making. These maps describe the location of possible valuable nature sites and old forests. If a possible logging site seems to fall into an area with nature values, it is checked either from the forest resource data, which shows the previous management history of the site, or by visiting the site.

We buy wood chips and pulpwood e.g., from local sawmills, and the same principle is followed for these trades: we only accept wood from commercial forests.

We regularly internally review these criteria with our staff who buy wood and emphasize accuracy in logging site selection.