The announcement follows hot on the heels of fellow Nordic forest products firm Metsä Wood’s new cost-cutting programme across its international timber business.
Stora Enso also revealed a group loss before tax of €36m (2012: €90m profit) for the first quarter. Its Building and Living division – which includes the sawmilling business – recorded earnings before interest and tax of €4m, 60% down on a year ago, from sales of €441m.
"We understand this new plan may cause concerns among our employees," said Stora Enso CEO Jouko Karvinen.
"At the same time we believe the plan is crucial to enable us as a group to stay true to our strategy and continue our transformation."
The group said the full impact of its new streamlining and restructuring programme would be felt from the second quarter of 2014.
The programme will include all business areas and corporate functions and includes the earlier announced €30m savings programme in the Building and Living division.
In addition to reducing costs, the restructuring will reduce interdependencies between businesses and enable a stronger focus on growth in value creating businesses.
"We plan to clearly and decisively further reduce our fixed costs to revenue ratio not only to adjust to the decline in market demand, but also to clearly add resilience against the cyclical and structural changes in our revenue," said Mr Karvinen.
Proposed changes include reducing from four to three divisions by integrating the Building and Living with Printing and Reading. The other two divisions would be the existing Renewable Packaging and Biomaterials Business Areas Divisions and corporate functions will undergo organisational streamlining, while further outsourcing in group shared services and sale of non-core assets will be considered. Centralisation of functions in one location will be a focus.
The new division structure will be in place by July 1, though all detailed plans are subject to the outcome of co-determination negotiations.
