In a further illustration of the difficulty of establishing new ventures in Europe, Finnish NextGen fibre manufacturer Spinnova is to temporarily close its Woodspin manufacturing facility in Jyväskylä, Finland.

This follows the withdrawal in April of cellulosic pulp giant Suzano from its partnership with Spinnova.

Spinnova has struck a deal to acquire all of Suzano’s shares in Woodspin for a consideration of €1, including all assets in Suzano Finland at the Jyväskylä site, and retain 16 of Suzano Finland’s employees. Both Spinnova and Suzano will continue to fund Woodspin for the financial year 2025, as agreed and committed to in February.  The book value of Spinnova’s share in Woodspin totalled €19.4 million as of 31 December 2024.

Spinnova’s CEO Janne Poranen said the company would continue its development work on improving its fibre concept efficiency to reduce the costs of production and investment.

“We have received confirmation from textile value chain operators that the properties of Spinnova’s fibre are already sufficient for selected commercial applications,” he said. “However, fibre production costs are currently too high. For this reason, we will focus in particular on reducing production and investment costs.

“The goal is to build an international consortium of companies, to accelerate the scaling of the Spinnova concept. We are currently looking for partners for this collaboration.”

www.woodspin.com