Scandinavian forest companies invest game-changing $3B for bioenergy and bioproducts
In Scandinavia, according to Wood Resource Quarterly, forest companies have announced that they will invest $3 billion in 2014 to diversify their product lines to include bio-products from wood fiber and to generate bioenergy resources.
In addition to the investments in the pulp and paper industry, there has also been an announcement that the Swedish forest owner federation Sodra, together with the Norwegian energy company Statkraft, Europe’s largest producer of renewable energy, intends to establish an biofuel conglomerate at the site of the now closed pulpmill in Tofte, just south of the capital Oslo.
In Finland, Metsä Fiber has plans to invest 1.5 billion dollars in a plant that will produce softwood pulp, renewable bioenergy and what the company categorizes as “various bio-materials”.
The primarily end-products targeted with the investment will be softwood market pulp and virgin fiber-based container board, but major investments are also being consider in increasing the utilization of forest biomass for energy on a larger scale. Although the investment decisions have not been finalized for all projects, these recent developments in the Nordic countries may very well be the beginning of the biggest transformation of the softwood fiber-based forest industry we have seen in decades.
Category: Fuels
