Here are Antti’s comments on Stora Enso’s decision to retain its Central European sawmills and initiate change negotiations.
Stora Enso announced on Tuesday that it has completed the strategic review of its Central European sawmills and building solutions operations. As we already estimated in connection with the Q3 report, selling the business at a reasonable price likely proved impossible in the prevailing, extremely weak construction cycle, and the company ended up keeping the operations as part of the group. To curb losses and costs, the company is initiating efficiency improvement measures in the unit, which will lead, among other things, to the closure of one production line in Austria and will affect up to 250 employees. The news was completely expected for us and does not create immediate pressure to revise Stora Enso’s operational forecasts.