Valmet will close a manufacturing site in Sweden and scale back operations at two further plants in Sweden and Poland, cutting around 350 roles, after concluding change negotiations that also clear the way for the temporary layoff of roughly 2,400 employees in Finland. That is according to Valmet, the Espoo-based technology group that supplies pulp, paper, board, and energy production lines to mills worldwide, and announced the conclusion of negotiations on 21 May.
The Swedish and Polish negotiations, which began in March, will end manufacturing at the Sundsvall site in Sweden and introduce operational changes at plants in Gothenburg and the Polish city of Jelenia Góra. Valmet has tied the decision to the long-term competitiveness of its Biomaterial Solutions and Services segment and to the efficiency of its global manufacturing network, which it has been steadily consolidating.
Those measures were first outlined as affecting up to 170 roles in Sundsvall, 55 in Gothenburg and 130 in Jelenia Góra, with the company estimating annual net cost savings of about EUR 20 million once the changes take full effect by early 2027. The Sundsvall closure stands as the most consequential of the three, ending the site’s run as a Valmet production facility.
In Finland, a separate round of negotiations opened in April has cleared the way for temporary layoffs covering approximately 2,400 employees, a measure the company expects to run from June until the end of December. The layoffs will last a maximum of 90 days per worker and will be applied based on workload at individual sites.
Valmet has presented the Finnish layoffs as a step to protect profitability by matching capacity to a workload that has fallen short of expectations. The company points to customer-driven project delays, soft order intake for new paper and board machines and a continued lull in biomaterials services as the forces behind the shortfall.
The slowdown was evident in Valmet’s first-quarter results, when orders received fell 18 per cent to EUR 1.09 billion amid thin capital project intake across the Biomaterial Solutions and Services segment. Net sales still rose 5 per cent over the same period, helped by a heavier share of revenue from large projects and smaller mill upgrades.
Chief executive Thomas Hinnerskov has described a market shaped by cautious customer decision-making and uneven demand across the industries Valmet serves, even as its Process Performance Solutions arm continues to post solid order growth. He has given little sign that the caution will ease in the months ahead.
“Customers are likely to remain selective in their investment decisions,” Hinnerskov said.
The reductions sit within a strategy Valmet calls Lead the Way, under which its Global Supply unit is aiming to achieve EUR 100 million in cost efficiencies by 2030 through changes to procurement, logistics and production. The Sweden and Poland closures account for the main manufacturing changes the company has so far identified within that unit.
Valmet employs about 18,500 people worldwide, roughly 5,900 of them in Finland, and has said it will work with employee representatives and support affected staff through the changes. The cuts come as the machinery sector absorbs a prolonged downturn, with major producers closing paper and board mills outright rather than ordering new lines, a shift that has pushed Nordic forest groups towards higher-value product lines.
