Stora Enso has just made official the announcement made in March 2022. The group, which was one of the largest paper producers, no longer has a division dedicated to this sector of activity.
The segment reporting of the company listed on the Stockholm and Helsinki stock exchanges will be changed on January 1, 2023, relegating paper production to the catch-all division "other".
For years, the group has been reducing its paper business. Last March, Stora Enso had announced that it wanted to divest four of its five paper production sites to focus on renewable products in packaging, building solutions and biomaterials innovations. "Paper is not a strategic growth area for the group." he said. By 2021, paper would account for only 16% of sales, compared to more than a third in 2015.
From now on, the two paper sites Maxau in Germany and Hylte in Sweden are carried forward in the Other segment until the completion of the disposals expected in the first half of 2023.
The Hylte mill will be sold to Sweden Timber, a Swedish-based forestry company, for an enterprise value of EUR 18 million and the acquisition of Maxau from Schwartz Produktion for an enterprise value of 210 million euros .
The sale of the Swedish paper mill Nymölla was finalized on January 2 with an enterprise value of about 150 million euros. It is now owned by US-based uncoated paper producer Sylvamo.
The paper mills at Langerbrugge in Belgium and Anjala in Finland are transferred to the Packaging Materials Division.
Concerning the Anjala paper site in Finland, Stora Enso has decided to stop the divestment process because "the benefits of keeping the site within the group outweigh the value of the disposal opportunities explored" according to Seppo Parvi, CFO of Stora Enso.
It now works in synergy with the neighboring Stora Enso packaging materials site (Ingerois), on raw materials and energy.
The Belgian site (in Langerbrugge) was the only paper site that the group intended to keep. However, a feasibility study is underway for a possible conversion of one of the two paper lines into a line of packaging materials.
In 2021, the Paper Division had approximately 2,300 employees and sales of ?1,703 million.
