Metsä Fibre aims to exceed its customers’ expectations. It requires cooperation with the customers, continuously improving the quality of operations and investing in new technology for long-term competitiveness, such as bioproduct mills. EXCEEDING EXPECTATIONS
MARKKU RIMPILÄINEN, photos ALEKSI POUTANEN
Metsä Fibre is the world’s largest producer of softwood market pulp. In 2018, the company produced 2.4 million tonnes of long-fibre softwood market pulp and 1.8 million tonnes of sawn timber. When you talk about volumes of this magnitude, the basics – such as the quality of the products – must be in order. “Reliable deliveries and consistent quality are the most important things for our customers. We’ve modernised our production units in such a way that our production, and thereby our delivery reliability, is in excellent shape,” says CEO Ismo Nousiainen . SERVICES BRING ADDED VALUE The next step for Metsä Fibre is to exceed the customer’s expectations. The company aims to provide its customers with better added value than its competitors. “We want our customers to be able to make the best possible product from our raw material, in a cost-effective manner. The best way to achieve this is to intensify cooper- ation. We’ve invested in development work in areas where we’ve increased the benefits our customers gain from our product.” Nousiainen mentions pulp refining as an example. “We can determine how to implement the refining so that the pulp is precisely of the kind the customer wants in terms of the paper machine’s runnability and the end product. This work has already been fruitful.” Refining audits have allowed customers to improve the runnability of paper and paperboard production lines and the quality of end products.
Another advanced added-value service is the quality index, with which customers can get precise data on the properties of the pulp delivered by Metsä Fibre. “Before, the properties of products were measured only after they were finished. Nowadays, we can collect the same data from our process.” Logistics and the customer’s production planning are fa- cilitated by radio-frequency identification (RFID); Metsä Fibre was the first pulp producer to adopt the technology. “We want RFID technology to become an industry standard. Our customers always have several pulp sup- pliers and they will get the most out of this technology if it’s used by all suppliers.” Nousiainen believes that demand for services offering added value is increasing. “Individual consumers are demanding increasingly bet- ter quality in the products they buy, but don’t necessarily want to pay any more for them. This creates challenges for the entire production chain and requires increasingly strong cooperation throughout the chain. This is how the significance of value added services grows.” SALES AGREEMENTS ACCORDING TO CUSTOMER NEED Many buyers make long-term purchasing agreements in an attempt to ensure the pulp and sawn timber deliveries they require. This suits Metsä Fibre just fine. “When we talk about exceeding our customers’ expec- tations, we’re also thinking about the kinds of sales con- cepts we employ. Their development needs to start from customer needs. We’re ready to discuss new models which create added value for customers.”
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