20 February 2012

Forest industry’s investments in Finland increased considerably last year. For this year only slight increase is predicted, but a larger share of new capacity will be built.

By Hannes Mäntyranta.
According to the inquiry on industrial investments in Finland conducted by the Confederation of Finnish Industries EK, forest industry investment plans in Finland come up to 549 million euros this year. There is not much increase in comparison with the previous year.
However, last year the increase was 41 percent. This was mainly due to the very low level of investments in the depression during the end of previous decade.
Looking at the other industries, larger figures of increase can be found. Still there are industries where even decrease in investments is predicted, as in metal products manufacturing industry and in electronics industries.
In chemical and machines and metal products manufacturing the increase percentages are somewhat below 20, and the investments are also larger than in forest industries. The largest increase in percentages is predicted for textile and clothing industries, but the growth is small in absolute figures.
All in all, the manufacturing industries plan to invest some 4,000 million euros in Finland this year. This means an increase of six percent.

Increasing capacity
36 percent of forest industry’s investments in this year will be used to replace old capacity. 27 percent will be used to build new capacity, which is clearly more than the figure of previous year, 12 percent. 30 percent of the investments will be used in rationalising.
Looking at the factors behind investment plans, especially demand is supposed to have increased and lack of demand does not restrict investments as much as before. Technical factors contribute to investments slightly more than in the previous year, in 18 percent of investments, which reflects about development in technology.
Of the forest industry personnel, some 48,800 were working abroad in 2011, which is a slight majority of the personnel. Since then the number has decreased so that it is below 45,000 today. The number of those working abroad has increased, while the number of those working in Finland has decreased.
For more information contact:

FOREST FOREST Association
Salomonkatu 17 A
FI-00100 HELSINKI (Finland)
Tel. +358 9 685 0880.
Fax +358 9 6850 8820.
E-mail: forest@smy.fi