Metsä Board Starts up New Biopower Plant at Kyro Mill in Finland

Metsä Board, Finland, has started up a new EUR 50 million biopower plant at its Kyro mill in Finland. The new plant, developed by Metsä Board in partnership with two Finnish energy companies, will approximately halve the carbon footprint of Metsä Board's folding boxboards Carta Elega and Avanta Prima.

"We have been working on improving the energy efficiency and sustainability of our mills. The new biopower plant will help us in these efforts, as well as meeting our target of cutting carbon dioxide emissions by 30% across operations by 2020 compared with 2009 levels," said Mikko Helander, CEO of Metsä Board.

The new biopower plant will replace the use of fossil natural gas with carbon dioxide-neutral, discarded wood, including predominantly bark and other biomass from industrial side streams, as well as logging residual and chips from first thinnings of growing forests. The biopower plant will produce electricity and heat for Metsä Board Kyro, and also provide heating for the neighboring district of Hämeenkyrӧ. Carbon dioxide emissions from the Kyro mill will be reduced by approximately 100,000 metric tpy, to about a quarter of previous levels.

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