Europe’s Sawmills Shrink as Holmen and Stora Enso Cut Capacity

Rubber and Wood  |  2026-09-07 01:56:31   |   By

The three-week talks cover the whole workforce, which Stora Enso counts at about 60 and lists at 56 on its own site.

SEATTLE (Scrap Monster):  Holmen will cut its Linghem sawmill in southern Sweden from 72,000 cubic metres a year to 26,000 and lay off 18 of its 30 workers, in what the Swedish group calls the weakest market for sawn timber in 30 years. That is according to Karolina Svensson, head of Holmen’s wood products business, who announced the cut on 31 August, citing high log prices, tougher competition for raw materials, and weak demand.

“To secure long-term profitability, we need to balance our production according to the market conditions that prevail,” Svensson said. The business lost 55 million Swedish kronor in the June quarter, and Ulrika Carlstein, its communications chief, says output has now been cut at every Holmen sawmill except Iggesund.

Stora Enso opened talks in mid-August to close its Veits

iluoto sawmill at Kemi for good, the 200,000 cubic metre pine mill that has been idle since August, with all 56 workers stood down. Matti Lielahti, head of the company’s Oulu business unit, told Yle the mill’s profitability “has been weak for quite some time” and named raw material and sawn timber prices as the problem.

The three-week talks cover the whole workforce, which Stora Enso counts at about 60 and lists at 56 on its own site. No decision on closure or redundancies comes before they end, the company says, and its plan sends Veitsiluoto’s pine sawing to Oulu and Kalajoki.

Sawn softwood output across the 14 EOS member countries fell 1.5 per cent in 2025 and will contract again in 2026, the European Organisation of the Sawmill Industry told its general assembly in Brussels on 17 June, after a 10 per cent fall in the two years from the 2021 peak. EOS projects Germany, the largest producer, at 20.3 million cubic metres for 2025, 9 per cent fewer than in 2024, and Finland up 7 per cent at 11.7 million.

It counts capacity rising in Austria and Finland, while falling in Germany and Sweden, and Tommi Sneck, its president, said in Oslo last October that sawnwood prices “have not kept pace with the increase of log prices”.

Europe’s mills are cutting on log costs while North America’s panel mills cut on demand, with West Fraser citing “a significant weakening of OSB demand” when it curtailed 860 million square feet at High Level, Alberta, in December and kept a 440 million square foot line at Cordele, Georgia, idle.

Binderholz signed on 31 July to buy Kuhmo Oy, a 500,000-cubic-metre Finnish sawmill with revenue of 150 million euros and 180 staff, subject to competition approval. Reinhard Binder, its chairman, called the purchase “a clear commitment to our Finnish operations”.

Stora Enso says the closure would have “only a minor impact” on the Oulu unit’s wood consumption, and the mill’s 56 jobs are waiting on talks the company expected to take three weeks from mid-August.

Courtesy: www.woodcentral.com.au