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Metsä Board’s renewed Lead the Pack strategy puts Consumer Packaging at the center of the company’s growth plan, while Retail Packaging is being managed around white kraftliners and improved profitability. The company also plans to reduce its exposure to Market Pulp as it works to stabilize performance and cash flow.
During a virtual press briefing on the 2026 to 2030 strategy, Esa Kaikkonen, CEO of Metsä Board, said the first phase is focused on a profitability turnaround through the transformation program launched last summer. The second phase will move the company further toward premium packaging solutions for consumer brands.
Metsä Board’s official strategy structure identifies three business areas for the strategy period: Consumer Packaging, Retail Packaging, and Market Pulp. During the briefing, Kaikkonen said Consumer Packaging, which includes folding boxboard and foodservice board, represents 58% of the company’s business portfolio. Retail Packaging, represented by the company’s white kraftliner offering, accounts for 36%. He also referenced molded pulp, softwood pulp, hardwood pulp, and BCTMP, or bleached chemi-thermomechanical pulp, when discussing the remaining parts of the portfolio.
Consumer Packaging is the growth area in the plan. Kaikkonen said Metsä Board sees the premium segment for Consumer Packaging growing 3% to 4%, and the company’s goal is to grow faster than that market, using 2025 volumes as the baseline.
Retail Packaging has a more focused role in the plan. Kaikkonen said Metsä Board is aiming to optimize the portfolio and use its focused mill fleet in white kraftliners to improve business performance. Market Pulp is the area where Metsä Board plans to reduce exposure, with Kaikkonen pointing to a decline in the segment.
“We have said that we will be reducing our dependency on this and dependency on the market pulp and then stabilizing the cash flow through decreasing the amount of market pulp in our portfolio going forward,” he said.
The company’s geographic mix varies depending on whether it is measured by volume or turnover. Kaikkonen said Europe represented 55% of Metsä Board’s volumes in 2025, while emerging markets represented 15%. The Americas accounted for 30% of turnover in 2025.
The Americas remain a focus for the company because Metsä Board has a long-established market position in the region, Kaikkonen said. He added that the company has a portfolio and service model that allow it to compete like a local player. Limited local availability of high-quality, lightweight paperboards creates growth opportunities, he said, particularly in sustainable packaging for food and foodservice and in packaging that supports brand promotion.
That regional opportunity sits within a paperboard market that remains challenging in the short term. Kaikkonen said the global paperboard market is currently well supplied, with inflation pressuring margins. Longer term, he said, consumers continue to prefer fiber-based packaging, and brand owners are responding by looking at plastic conversion into fiber packaging. Regulatory initiatives are also supporting that trend, he said.
Erja Hyrsky, SVP, commercial operations at Metsä Board, said folding boxboard is being affected in the short term by geopolitical uncertainty, cost inflation, and weaker consumer demand. She said the long-term outlook remains strong because of demand for renewable, recyclable, and low-carbon packaging.
“Folding boxboard in particular is the fastest-growing cartonboard grade, and we see the forecast from 2025 to 2030 at a 4.1% CAGR,” Hyrsky said. “This is supported by the lightweighting and sustainability advantages, especially in food and foodservice end-use segments.”
Minna Björkman, SVP, containerboard at Metsä Board, said the company’s Retail Packaging focus is entirely on premium white-top kraftliners. She described the category as a small but strategically important niche within the global containerboard market.
According to Björkman, white-top kraftliners represent about 2% of the total global containerboard market, or about 4.5 million tons. In North America, she said, the market is slightly larger, at 4% to 5%. Metsä Board expects longer-term growth of about 1% to 2% per year through 2030, supported by retail-ready packaging, displays, e-commerce, digital printing, plastic replacement, and regulatory requirements.
“Corrugated packaging is no longer only about protection. For brand owners, it is also about visibility and brand impact,” Björkman said. “That is where our Kemi white-top kraftliner really creates value.”
Growth in the Americas is expected to come largely from Consumer Packaging. In response to a question about the company’s plan to increase business in the region, Kaikkonen said the growth is planned more on the Consumer Packaging side and asked Hyrsky to address the route to market.
Hyrsky said Metsä Board has a long-standing presence in the Americas and a team based in Connecticut serving customers in the region. She pointed to opportunities in food, foodservice, and pharmaceutical packaging, along with closer engagement with brand owners.
“We want to engage even more with brand owners and help them design packaging solutions that are sustainable, cost-efficient, and effective in winning over local consumers,” Hyrsky said. “We definitely see ourselves as a strong player in FBB in the Americas for the years to come.”
Tariffs have had some impact on Metsä Board’s business, particularly in foodservice board, Kaikkonen said. He linked that pressure to competition from ready-made plates and cups coming directly into the market. On the folding boxboard side, he said the company has held firm in volumes.
Anssi Tammilehto, CFO of Metsä Board, said competitiveness is a major focus for the company as it works through market uncertainty, tariffs, and cost pressure. During the briefing, he said the company’s profit improvement program targets a EUR 200 million annualized EBITDA improvement run rate by the end of 2027. Launched in mid-2025, the program had reached EUR 100 million after the first quarter, Tammilehto said. He described it as a 10-quarter program, with roughly half of the target tied to cost measures and half tied to commercial actions.
“So approximately 100 is from the cost side of things, and 100 is from the commercial side of things,” he said. “So being more agile and trying to optimize our footprint as I mentioned already in the mills but also in the whole supply chain all the way to the end customers.”
E-commerce is also part of Metsä Board’s growth outlook, though executives described it as a value driver rather than a separate segment. Björkman said that from the white kraftliner perspective, e-commerce is closely tied to the unboxing experience and the appearance of the shipping box.
Björkman said North America remains a key market for Kemi white-top kraftliners, adding that the company has served the region for decades. She said brands in North America invest heavily in packaging and compete in a retail environment where packages need to stand out in supermarkets, club stores, and other large-format retailers.
Hyrsky added that e-commerce helps drive demand for strong, lightweight, visually appealing packaging. For folding boxboard, she said, the opportunity is tied less to volume alone and more to higher-value applications where performance, sustainability, and brand impact matter.
Metsä Board also discussed its recently announced partnership with Heidelberg. Kaikkonen said the collaboration will help the company better understand how its materials perform through printing and converting, while also allowing it to gather data that can support material efficiency and regulatory requirements.
Hyrsky said the partnership will help Metsä Board ensure its paperboard performs well in different printing and converting environments. She said the work also gives Metsä Board another view into paperboard performance and helps both companies serve customers in higher-value segments.
The briefing also touched on chemical requirements for food packaging in the U.S. Kaikkonen said Metsä Board has selected foodservice, pharma, beauty care, and specialty premium brands as focus areas partly because of food safety requirements.
Metsä Board says its paperboards are designed for safe food contact and comply with relevant regulations in the U.S., including FDA regulations and equivalent global standards. Kaikkonen said food safety is part of the value Metsä Board offers customers.
Asked whether Metsä Board has enough manufacturing capacity to support its growth targets, Kaikkonen pointed to recent investments in the company’s asset base. Over the past five years, he said, Metsä Board has invested more than EUR 1 billion, expanded capacity, and removed some older capacity that had reached the end of its life cycle.
“Absolutely, we have,” Kaikkonen said. “We still have room for growth.” PW
