Stora Enso Timber to start negotiations with its personnel at Veitsiluoto Sawmill
STORA ENSO OYJ Stock Exchange Release 3 May 2005 at 11.00
Stora Enso Timber to start negotiations with its personnel at Veitsiluoto Sawmill On 10 May 2005 Stora Enso Timber will start negotiations with its personnel at Veitsiluoto Sawmill in Finland as required by the Act on Co-operation within Undertakings. The negotiations will concern temporary lay-offs of the personnel at Veitsiluoto Sawmill for productional and financial reasons, in line with the aims of Stora Enso's European profit improvement programme. At the same time, Stora Enso Timber is considering all options that would enable the sawmill to resume production on a profitable basis. Operations at the Veitsiluoto Sawmill are unprofitable owing to high raw material costs, declining prices for Nordic redwood products and high labour costs. The sawmill is modern and efficient, but under current operating conditions there is no significant prospect of an improvement in profitability. The Veitsiluoto sawmill has 92 employees and an annual production capacity of 300 000 m3 of sawn wood products for the construction and joinery industries and wood products trade. The outcome of the negotiations will be announced at the latest by mid July. For further information, please contact: Pekka Hämäläinen, Senior Vice President, Nordic Production Group, Stora Enso Timber, tel. +358 400 553 984 Peter Nissen, Mill Manager, Stora Enso Timber, Veitsiluoto Mill, tel. +358 400 294413 Matti Karjula, Senior Vice President, Wood Supply Finland, tel. +358 40 520 6240 Kari Vainio, Executive Vice President, Corporate Communications, tel. +44 7799 348 197 Keith B Russell, Senior Vice President, Investor Relations, tel. +44 20 7016 3146 Ulla Paajanen-Sainio, Vice President, Investor Relations and Financial Communications, tel. +358 40 763 8767 STORA ENSO OYJ p.p. Jussi Siitonen Veli-Matti Tahvanainen