UPM's plywood division is suffering from imports

UPM, Helsinki, will curb its production of soft plywood. Mika Sillanpää, executive vice president of the plywood division, holds the large amounts of cheap imports from South America currently pushing onto the European market responsible for this development, and disadvantageous developments in the stock exchange rates pose another problem that make this measure necessary.

In the plywood plant Pellos in the southeast of Finland, 580 employees will be temporarily laid off (similar to subsidized temporary layoffs in Germany). The site is producing coated and uncoated plywood used in the parquet industry, construction and logistics sectors and for concrete formwork, and its capacity ranges around 480,000 m³/yr. The duration of the measure and to which extent production will be reduced has not been specified.

Only recently in October, the group had still announced an expansion of its birch plywood production.