Production has officially ended at Mets\u00e4 Group's plywood mills in Suolahti, Finland, bringing to a close operations that employed hundreds of people and formed a key part of the region's wood processing industry.<\/p>\n
The company announced that softwood plywood production ended at the end of May 2026, following the closure of the birch plywood mill in March 2025. The shutdown completes a phased closure plan announced by Mets\u00e4 Group after restructuring negotiations held at the end of 2024.<\/p>\n
The company cited weak profitability as the reason for closing the facilities.<\/p>\n
Around 370 jobs affected<\/strong><\/p>\n The Suolahti plywood mills employed approximately 370 people before the closures began.<\/p>\n The 186 employees of the softwood plywood mill were informed of layoffs in January. According to local reports, around 150 of them have not yet secured new employment. Their employment contracts are expected to end after the summer holiday period, at the end of July.<\/p>\n Although production stopped on 22 May, around 140 employees remained on site in early June to complete cleanup work and other activities related to the shutdown of operations.<\/p>\n Mets\u00e4 Group stated that permanent employees at the mills and the associated power plant were offered opportunities to transfer to other Mets\u00e4 Group locations in Finland.<\/p>\n Deliveries to continue from inventories<\/strong><\/p>\n Despite the end of manufacturing, customer deliveries will continue for several months.<\/p>\n According to plant management, plywood inventories have been built up and the company intends to continue serving customers through the end of 2026.<\/p>\n The closure also marks the end of operations at Kumpuniemen Voima, the combined heat and power plant jointly owned by Mets\u00e4 Group and \u00c4\u00e4nekosken Energia. The facility supplied heat and electricity to the mill complex.<\/p>\n Dismantling of the power plant is expected to begin in September.<\/p>\n Future of the site under evaluation<\/strong><\/p>\n Mets\u00e4 Group is now evaluating options for the future use of the Suolahti industrial site.<\/p>\n The property includes approximately 60,000 m\u00b2 of industrial buildings. According to the company, inquiries have been received from both local and external parties, although no agreements have yet been concluded.<\/p>\n The dismantling of machinery is expected to take more than a year, meaning that most of the premises are unlikely to become available for new users before 2028.<\/p>\n The closure brings an end to plywood production in Suolahti, where the final birch logs were peeled in March 2025 and the last softwood plywood panels were produced in May 2026.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":98994,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"Default","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5204],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-98993","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-daily-news"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n