M-real has successfully completed the rebuild of its Kyro mill in Finland, where it makes the high-quality folding boxboards Carta Elega and Avanta Prima—used especially for beauty care and health care packaging. The rebuild increases the mill’s capacity by 40,000 metric tons per annum to 190,000 metric tons per annum, and is part of M-real’s investment program, targeted at improving availability and service to customers.

“The increased capacity will allow us to offer our customers better service, with shorter lead times on orders and greater availability,” says Mika Joukio, senior vice president and head of M-real consumer packaging. “We believe demand for our fresh forest fiber products will continue to increase, due to their purity, light weight and sustainability.”

In a separate joint venture, M-real is building a new biopower plant next to the Kyro mill, to replace fossil natural gas with COneutral wood. This consists of predominantly bark, chips, stumps and other discarded wood together with mill broke. The biopower plant will also provide heating for the neighboring district of Hämeenkyrӧ. After the start-up of the plant in autumn 2012, CO emissions from the Kyro mill will be reduced by approximately 100,000 metric tons per annum, equivalent to the annual emissions of around 60,000 cars.

M-real’s investment program, which will increase its total folding boxboard capacity by 150,000 metric tons per annum to 935,000 metric tons per year, also includes a rebuild at the Simpele mill, which was finalized in June 2011, and the rebuild of its Äänekoski board machine, due for completion in spring 2012. Together with $ 21 million invested at M-real Kemi to improve the quality of its white-top kraftliners and the biopower plant, the total investment in the consumer packaging business area will exceed $133 million during 2011-2012.