Continuous supply of high-quality fresh fibre pulp will be shipped into east coast port of Hull, says Mika Paljakka, Senior Vice President UK/Ireland, as the Metsä Group proposes its first UK production site. Report by Senior Editor Helen Morris.
In September 2023, Finnish-headquartered Metsä Tissue, the tissue paper business of Metsä Group, announced that its new UK-based, multi-million-pound landmark investment – which it says will be the UK’s “largest tissue production capacity” plant – will be located in Goole, Yorkshire.
The 240,000tpy plant is being revved up in stages across the next decade, and once up and running it will serve both the local professional and consumer markets. Crucially, it will also reduce the 45% of tissue products Metsä Tissue says are currently imported into the UK and Ireland annually, increasing the UK’s self-sufficiency in tissue paper production by more than 30%.
At the time of the announcement, Metsä Tissue Chief Executive Esa Kaikkonen explained that the location of the plant in the Humber region would provide “a crucial gateway to the whole of the United Kingdom, and the region’s ambitions to bring cutting-edge green technology.” The move would also bring the UK and Finland together “through combining the sustainable raw material of fresh wood fibres grown in the Nordics, with world-class local production of quality tissues in the UK.”
Why did the company choose the UK for its investment? The reasons are very logical, Mika Paljakka, Senior Vice President UK/Ireland, says: “Metsä Tissue is very strong in Finland, the Nordics, Central and Eastern Europe. In the UK, traditionally we have not been that big, since we have never had any production here. And as a market, the UK is one of the top five consumers of tissue paper products in Europe. Consumption is very high.”
The second reason is that the UK market for tissue is around one million tonnes of consumption: “Out of which, the UK is Europe’s largest net importer of tissue raw materials and finished goods. 45% of consumption is imported. That’s a significant number.”
The essence of the imported products he says, is that they are mainly coming from “less-sustainable supply chains.” As an example, he details pulp being produced and then transported from the southern hemisphere, exported to Southern Europe to produce the base paper, and then exported on to the UK: “So the carbon footprint of that supply chain is rather nasty. One of our primary targets is to replace that part of the imported supply chain.”
By comparison, in Finland Metsä Group has reliable access to high-quality fresh fibre pulp, which will then be shipped to neighbouring Hull in the UK and transported to the plant. “We can then produce the final goods in the UK and distribute them to local customers, and that means there is a reduction in the carbon footprint for transportation to the UK.”
The UK’s national target is to be carbon neutral by 2050, while Metsä Tissue’s target is for all products to be manufactured from fully fossil-fuel-free raw materials by 2030, and for all its mills to operate without the use of fossil fuels by 2030. “We aim to replace almost half of the imported products with local British production, using fresh fibre pulp as the main raw material from sustainably-managed forests in the Nordics,” Paljakka says.
How will the company achieve that in Goole? “When we have the whole operation up and running, by replacing imported products we can increase the share of domestic production. We can also help our customers with their sustainability targets. Metsä Group’s parent company, Metsäliitto Cooperative, owns over a half of Finland’s private forests. Our owner-members manage their forests sustainably from one generation to the next, creating a solid foundation for the development of profitable and responsible business. We use high-quality wood raw material primarily from our owner-members’ forests. Together we increase the value of the Finnish forests while respecting nature. So we have good access to high-quality, slow grown, PEFC and FSC-certified Nordic fresh fibre. That means we can say that sustainability is one of our strategic cornerstones.”
Finland has the highest level of PEFC and FSC certification level in Europe, he says: “It’s over 80% for example in PEFC certifications. In Finland, having a certificate as a forest owner means you must have a rolling 10-year maintenance plan for your forest land and an outcome of that is that a well-treated forest grows faster. Overall, the annual harvesting is 70m cubic metres of wood and the growth of forests is around 100m cubic metres annually. So the amount of wood is increasing in Finland.”
While no machinery supplier has yet been mentioned for the Goole site, the company is now spending its time preparing the local planning permit. Metsä current presence in the UK market is 100% Professional customers and it is planning for the start of operating with Consumer customers. “When the whole operation is up and running, we will have a good coverage in both categories”.
He also stresses he hopes the site will be positive for the local people and the UK as a whole: “We have held public hearings and have had an open house policy. Anyone can come along to hear about our plans. We want to share all the information and be transparent. At the end of the day, the positive impact for the local economy is rather big but it’s natural some people who live nearby are worried. With open communication and sharing everything honestly takes at least part or even all those worries. Metsä Tissue wants to be a good local citizen, operating there and offering employment opportunities for hundreds of local people.”
Life, he adds, is “not always sailing in a back wind: there are challenges”. “I think the biggest challenges we are facing is that historically, people in the United Kingdom have a common view that recycled products are better. Metsä is all for recycling, but not for tissue paper products because we believe that recycled paper is best utilised in products that do not require that high hygiene standards, like the outer transportation boxes. Furthermore, whatever you are producing with recycled raw material, its availability is going down, its quality is going down, and the price is going up, and remember that we have good access to Northern fresh fibre. So Metsä Tissue has made a strategic decision to concentrate on fresh fibre-based tissue paper products. Using fresh fibre is more sustainable as well because when using recycled fibre products one must have an energy- and water-intensive deinking operation to get rid of all the ink, which in tissue production is vitally important because the product has to be hygienic. Recycled fibre should be used just when it makes sense commercially and functionality.”
The other issue for the UK market he says is hot air dryers: “Despite scientific evidence showing that paper towels are more hygienic for drying hands than hot air dryers, our 2024 Katrin survey showed that in Great Britain, people are less likely to prefer drying their hands with paper towels than other nationalities. 52 % of those surveyed in the UK preferred hot air dryers compared to an average of 27 % in all other countries surveyed.
Recently a lot of European-headquartered companies have been investing in tissue facilities in the UK. Does he think the UK will increasingly attract more investment from the continent? “I think it comes back to the question of the imported products. And at the same time, awareness of the sustainability performance of companies is increasing. Today, people say that sustainability is important, but do people know what it exactly means. What does it mean in the performance of an individual mill, or the performance of a whole company?”
How Metsä does what it does, he adds, and how it deals with its customers, is included in the company’s sustainability targets: “What is greenwashing, and what is not greenwashing? The UK has a high consumption of tissue papers and a large share of imported products. This is alongside a backdrop of increasing awareness of sustainability performance. When you look at the base line in the UK, and its tissue paper production, most of the local production facilities are 20 or more years old. Investments are needed for modern, high-quality tissue paper manufacturing. By removing old, non-efficient, non-sustainable capacity and investing in high performing and energy efficient production, the companies are supporting and helping the UK as a nation to work towards achieving carbon neutrality earlier than 2050.”
