Metsa Board starts up operations at new Excellence Centre

Metsa Board has started up operations at its new Excellence Centre at its bioeconomy site in Annekoski, Finland.

The centre aims to accelerate material and packaging innovation and provide a collaboration platform for customers and technology partners globally. “As the amount of packaging continues to grow, new, sustainable solutions are needed to replace fossil-based materials and ensure circularity. The Excellence Centre concept enables paperboard and packaging solutions that look at the entire value chain, and not just at its separate parts,” said CEO Mika Joukio. The Excellence Centre - which covers a total of 1,500ms - includes R&D facilities, a packaging design studio, a customer feedback centre and a laboratory providing more than 100 different measurement methods and analytics. The centre also features a virtual store and a computer-aided engineering (CAE) tool to allow sophisticated simulation and analysis of packaging performance. Virtual collaboration workshops have also been developed to enable joint development and co-creation if physical meetings are not possible. “Renewable and recyclable fresh fibre paperboard can be utilised for packaging in many ways. Fibre-based packaging has a lot to offer, and together with our partners and the new Excellence Centre, we are able to explore the possibilities,” said Joukio.