During the course of the third quarter, the “Wood products” division of Stora Enso sold a total of 1.071m m³ of wood products, roughly 9.6 % less than in the same quarter of last year. According to the quarterly report presented on 20 October, besides delivery restrictions connected with the corona pandemic and lower prices for rough-sawn softwood assortments, this was also contributed to by the closure of the Kitee spruce sawmill at the end of 2019, the sale of the finger-jointed carcassing production plant in Pfarrkirchen completed in January 2020, and the reassignment of the Uimaharju sawmill to the “Biomaterials” division completed on 1 January.
The reduction in the sales figures also entailed a reduction of 10.3 % to €341m in sales revenue in the reporting period. According to corporate information, however, higher margins, particularly in sales on the US sawnwood market, lower raw-material procurement costs, and better fixed-cost control led to increases in the key performance figures. Operating EBITDA, for example, was 24.3 % higher than a year earlier at €49m and EBIT was 37.9 % up at €38m. The margins rose correspondingly by around four percentage points each to 14.3 % and 11.0 %. Operational return on operating Capital (ROOC) was boosted to 25.2 %, restoring it to a level well above the group’s specified target of 20 %. For the purposes of further increasing internal added value, Stora Enso announced in September its final decision to build a cross-laminated timber (CLT) works in Ždírec, Czech Republic. Upon completion of the roughly €79m project, the group will have four CLT works with a combined annual capacity of approximately 390,000 m³.
