Metsä Fibre’s Rauma sawmill, part of Metsä Group, has concluded a service agreement with Euroports Finland on port operations for sawn timber in Rauma. The agreement is for four years and will take effect in the summer of 2022.
Automated conveyors will transfer the timber produced at the sawmill from packaging directly to the transport equipment for delivery to the port warehouse. The sawmill does not have warehouses for finished sawn timber, nor does it handle shipping operations.
“When running at full capacity, the sawmill will produce an annual 750,000 cubic metres of sawn timber. Depending on the market situation, a considerable share will be shipped to other countries. Our service agreement with Euroports offers a good logistical solution for the export of sawn timber. The company will handle the reception, storage and shipping of our products. Euroports has comprehensive expertise and modern equipment that satisfies current requirements. In addition, the company is committed to the environmental values and sustainability principles important to us,” says Harri Haapaniemi, Project Director at Rauma sawmill.
In the handling of sawn timber, Euroports Rauma is Finland’s third largest port operator and the market leader on the west coast. It currently handles more than 600,000 cubic metres of sawn timber annually.
“This means a considerable increase in the volume of mechanical forest industry products that we handle and will further boost Euroports Finland’s position as the leading sawn timber operator on the west coast. Rauma will become an important national hub for the mechanical forest industry. We also expect this to provide growth opportunities for other transports – for example, through new maritime transport routes. The new transports will naturally require large investments in equipment to increase the capacity of our hoisting devices, among other things. In line with sustainability principles, our new equipment will mainly be powered by electricity,” says Sari De Meulder, Managing Director of Euroports.
The value of Metsä Fibre’s Rauma sawmill investment is approximately EUR 200 million, and the new unit will produce around 750,000 cubic metres of pine sawn timber annually. The new sawmill will be a worldwide forerunner in technology and efficiency. For example, the use of machine vision and artificial intelligence in different stages of the sawing process is a significant new development. Similar technology is not yet in use anywhere in the sawmill industry. The construction of the sawmill is progressing as planned, and production will begin in the third quarter of 2022.
Photo: Harri Haapaniemi, Project Director at Rauma sawmill.
