Metsä Board is a leading European producer of premium fresh fibre paperboards. A part of Metsä Group, the Finnish company employed 2,400 people and sales totalled 1.9 billion euros in 2020. The investment at the Husum mill in Sweden supports the growing demand for sustainably produced packaging materials and will increase the board machine annual capacity by 50% to 600,000 tonnes.
According to Ari Kiviranta, SVP Technology at Metsä Board, there is a clear need for Metsä Board’s paperboards particularly with the rise of the circular economy. “We are not just increasing capacity and hoping that one day someone will want it. There is demand and the additional capacity will be used for growth in our main European markets and in North America.”
Metsä Board's folding boxboard is used in food, pharmaceutical and cosmetics packaging, and food service packaging and the investment is expected to increase annual sales by approximately 200 million euros.
Structuring the project has been a primary challenge, says Kiviranta, but simpler on the technical side, he adds. “The technical work is quite straightforward and we know the solutions. But in other aspects this is a demanding project. We needed a common view of what should be done in sales, in logistics, in marketing, and with sustainability and product safety.”
By turning to Trailmaker, the Metsä Board management team were hoping to achieve a single view of project execution and the capabilities that were required. “It saved valuable time”, he says, because “we got the important people to participate from the start".
“It forced us to show what a 200,000-tonne increase in capacity means in practice. What should we do now and what will happen in 6 months? The process was very compact and we kept the focus and discussed just the points that needed to be discussed,” says Kiviranta.
“Not only will capacity be increased, but also the mill's production efficiency and environmental performance will improve.”
TRAILMAKER is a concept for faster strategy execution:
• Concrete common view and commitment
• Identified capability needs
• Visibility
