The “golden age” of paper-based products is over, with global forest producers using state-of-the-art tech and material science to make the most of wood – in order to create higher value and longer-lasting forest products.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The push comes as Finnish media report that Mets\u00e4 Group and Stora Enso, two of the world’s largest manufacturers of forest products, have “completely abandoned printing paper,” with both, along with UPM, heavily investing in textiles, biofuels, and engineered wood products.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Last year, Wood Central revealed that Finland was among the countries hardest hit by Russian sanctions – with Finnish manufacturers in the southeast relying on pulp to produce high-volume paper products.<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n At the time, Dr Ali Harlin, a research professor at the VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland, said that wood availability was (and is) one of the most critical challenges facing the country’s \u20ac33 billion industry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n “You can send a thank-you note for that to the Kremlin. We have drifted into a situation where we have a significant shortage of wood, above all in southeast Finland,” Dr Harlin told the Finnish publication YLE<\/a><\/em>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n