Consumables

M-REAL CONSUMER PACKAGING MOVES TO FIVE CUSTOMER SERVICE CENTRES IN EUROPE – THE MARKET LEADER CONTINUES ALSO TO DEFEND ACHIEVED PRICES

Monday 01. June 2009 - In order to improve service, reduce complexity and increase efficiency M-real Consumer Packaging is concentrating its customer service into five centres in Europe. Following centralisation service levels will improve further and decision making will be faster. Customers will continue to receive service in their own languages.

M-real Consumer Packaging customer service centres and the markets they serve are as follows:

Maidenhead – UK and Ireland
Brussels – Benelux, France, Spain and Portugal
Frankfurt – Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Italy, Poland, Czech Republic, Slovakia and Hungary
Espoo – Nordic and Baltic countries, Greece and agent markets
Moscow – Russia, Ukraine and other CIS markets

“Concentrating our customer service into five centres in Europe not only improves our service to customers but is also an important step towards enhancing our financial performance in the current challenging operating environment,” says Mika Joukio, Head of M-real Consumer Packaging.

As the responsible market leader in Europe, M-real Consumer Packaging has been balancing the challenging market situation by taking downtime at all of its mills. “In the coming months we are prepared to take market related curtailments when needed in order to defend achieved price levels. However, the prices are still too low to compensate the very severe cost inflation that we have experienced during the past few years and therefore our profitability cannot reach a sufficient level. When supply and demand is in balance we are going to consider new price increases.,” Joukio concludes.