Metsä Tissue production heavily impacted by high energy prices

Since the beginning of this year, the growing energy crisis in Europe and, consequently, high energy prices, has led Metsä Tissue to carry out temporary production stops. The tissue business is very energy intensive and the extremely high energy prices are making the situation critical, and the great volatility in the current business environment and the recent extreme developments in cost inflation have resulted in these temporary production stops.

The situation has been continuously worsening and is impacting all Metsä Tissue’s markets in Europe and is especially demanding on the company’s Western and Eastern European mills. With the high energy cost inflation, further production curtailments are likely, and they may also impact the availability of daily Tissue products in the markets, as substantial amounts of daily production losses will occur.

According to Tobias Lüning, SVP Central Europe at Metsä Tissue, the company has been exploring all possible energy efficiency improvement actions and mitigation actions to replace Russian gas with alternative energy sources. “We have also been forced to revise our offering and the crisis will also speed up the move towards fresh fibre focused strategy, which enables lower energy use in the paper making, compared to recycled fibers,” he added.

This scenario leads Metsä Tissue to review its profitability daily and it is likely that high energy prices will continue to cause additional temporary production shutdowns.