OSLO, NORWAY: Due to unaffordability of operations in the current energy environment i.e. high energy prices, temporary downtime has been initiated at the Bruck paper mill in Austria.

The new boiler scheduled for start-up in April is expected to contribute to alleviate the situation by reducing the mill’s gas consumption and improve its energy supply. The boiler project and the packaging conversion project at the Bruck mill continue as planned.

“Bruck has delivered newsprint and LWC magazine paper to its customers despite a challenging energy market since the second half of 2021. Although we have secured parts of the mill’s energy supply in March, the energy prices we presently experience make operations at Bruck unsustainable,” says Sven Ombudstvedt, President and CEO of Norske Skog.

Norske Skog expects underlying EBITDA for the group in the first quarter of 2022 to be approximately in line with the fourth quarter of 2021.

Norske Skog acquired the Bruck mill in January 1996. Bruck, which is situated in Styria, Austria, produces both LWC and newsprint. With this acquisition Norske Skog’s product range was completed with coated magazine paper (LWC).

The high energy prices are happening in tandem with the elevated cost of crude oil. The price of Brent crude, an international 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 products in 2020, after the U.S. and Saudi Arabia, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, and accounts for about a tenth of the global oil supply.