Forest industry

Today the Finnish forest industry is one of the leading producers of sawn goods, pulp, paper and board in the world. Finland produces high-quality forest-industry products to meet the needs of its clientele, both at home and abroad. Exports have formed a crucial part of the sector's operations right from the start. Today, an average of 80% of output goes to customers outside Finland. Up to the period between the wars, the sawmill industry was in a dominant position, but since then, the focus has shifted to the pulp and paper industry. At present, three-quarters of the sector's output is paper and board. In the paper industry, printing and writing papers currently make up the most important product group.

The pulp and paper industry includes chemical and mechanical pulpmaking in addition to the manufacture of paper and paperboard. In chemical pulpmaking, a combination of chemicals and heat is used to dissolve the substance, called lignin, which binds the wood fibres together. In the mechanical process, the fibres are separated from each other by means of abrasion. In papermaking, the fibres, various additives and chemicals are mixed together in water. The mixture is spread out on a moving mesh belt called wire, where a paper web is formed as the water drains away.

Recycled paper is an important raw material and its use in the manufacture of paper and paperboard has increased all over the world. Though we live in a sparsely inhabited country Finland has a highly developed collection system for waste paper and 65 per cent of the potential total is recovered.

The processes used in the forest products industry - especially pulp- and papermaking - require a lot of energy. A large proportion of it, however, is derived from wood-based fuels, of which the most important are bark and black liquor, a by-product of chemical pulpmaking.

Mechanical wood processing is the general term describing those segments of the forest products industry in which manufacturing does not involve disrupting the cellular structure of wood. Thus it includes sawmilling, wooden panels and a variety of downstream products derived from them. These products involve different degrees of processing: for example, planed and finger-jointed lumber, faced plywood and similar items are not ready products in themselves, but are used as materials in, mainly, construction. EWP - Engineered Wood Products - have gained popularity on the market during the past ten years. EWP building products are manufactured from wood by glueing. Other items have a higher value-added input and are ready products without any further processing, e.g. windows, doors, furniture, prefabricated wooden buildings and ready-to-use building components (FFIF, 2001).