Stora Enso reports profits increase in Q1

The forestry products company Stora Enso reported Friday increased sales and operational business result during the first quarter (Q1) of 2021, which exceeded analysts' expectations, reported Xinhua.

Sales of Stora Enso increased by 3.1 percent to 2,276 million euros year-on-year. Its operational business result in Q1 reached 328 million euros from 180 million euros one year ago, according to a report publishedby the company on Friday.

Stora Enso's business result exceeded analysts' expectations, which had been 243 million euros, Finnish language business daily Kauppalehti noted.

Founded in 1998, Stora Enso is a major manufacturer of pulp paper and other forest products.

Annica Bresky, president and chief executive officer of the company, said in the report that the demand prospects are healthy in all other sectors than the paper sector. Excluding the paper sector, Q1 sales of Stora Enso increased by 14.3 percent and the operational business result reached 362 million euros.

Earlier this week, the company announced plans to close the paper and pulp plants in Veitsiluoto, Finland and Kvarnsveden, Sweden, which were expected to cut back the company's paper production capacity by 35 percent to 2.6 million tonnes per year.

Bresky told a press conference that a three or four percent increase in the demand for pulp is expected globally, "mainly driven by China." Bresky noted that performance in the company's package materials sector has been robust and the production capacity is fully sold out, and the market situation in China has continued to improve.

Stora Enso also gave more details in the report about its end-of-March announcement to pull out of making dissolving pulp, which is a raw material for the textile industry.

Chief financial officer Seppo Parvi said that the company had concluded that Stora Enso had no vistas for attaining a major market position in the dissolving pulp sector.