OSLO, NORWAY: Due to unaffordability of operations within the present energy environment i.e. excessive energy prices, temporary downtime has been initiated on the Bruck paper mill in Austria.
The new boiler scheduled for start-up in April is anticipated to contribute to alleviate the situation by reducing the mill’s gas consumption and enhance its energy supply. The boiler project and the packaging conversion project on the Bruck mill proceed as planned.
“Bruck has delivered newsprint and LWC journal paper to its customers regardless of a difficult energy market since the second half of 2021. Although we have secured parts of the mill’s energy provide in March, the energy costs we presently expertise make operations at Bruck unsustainable,” says Sven Ombudstvedt, President and CEO of Norske Skog.
Norske Skog expects underlying EBITDA for the group within the primary quarter of 2022 to be roughly in line with the fourth quarter of 2021.
Norske Skog acquired the Bruck mill in January 1996. Bruck, which is located in Styria, Austria, produces each LWC and newsprint. With this acquisition Norske Skog’s product vary was accomplished with coated journal paper (LWC).
The excessive energy costs are happening in tandem with the elevated cost of crude oil. The price of Brent crude, an worldwide benchmark, opened at $128.99 per barrel on Tuesday morning, a 4.6 percent increase from a month ago.
Russia was the world’s third-largest producer of petroleum merchandise in 2020, after the U.S. and Saudi Arabia, in accordance to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, and accounts for about a tenth of the worldwide oil supply.