The move will involve the reduction of 150 staff from the current 730 spread across 100 locations in 30 countries.

Four regional reporting and accounting service centres will also be established in Germany, France, the UK and US.

“These measures are necessary in order to increase the efficiency of our services,” said Turkka Keskinen, UPM‘s senior vice-president of business control and financial shared services.

“Many other companies have resorted to outsourcing their financial services, but we believe this plan will give us the same effect in-house, with even better results,” said Mr Keskinen.

The staff reductions are included in the 3,600 jobs losses announced by UPM earlier this year.