Your Crumbl Cookie Box is Hiding a Wild Backstory
As a journalist, sometimes your curiosity gets the best of you.
… Which is how I find myself in a chilly remote forest in Finland, on a press trip to see how the company Metsä makes its fresh fiber paper products. Which, in theory, might sound ultimately boring, were it not for what I’d heard about Metsä over the years: that they take sustainable production to innovative and elaborate, if not intense, heights. That they oversee a homegrown regenerative forestry program focused on native trees and biodiversity. That they produce the most coated white kraftliners globally using 90% fossil-free energy—with a goal to achieve zero CO₂ in all their mills by the end of 2030, not unlike their massive future-forward complex in the town of Äänekoski, which produces 2.4 times as much energy as it consumes, and is entirely free of fossil fuels. That this is all being done in the private sector.
Collectively, it’s a remarkable operation on its own. But the real reason I’m here today is because I want to find out why.
Why would a company go to such lengths to make the elemental stuff we use in our daily lives, from cereal boxes to snack packs to all manner of paperboard in between?!
Photo: Zachary Petit
The Forest
It’s starkly quiet, but the forest thrums with life. The air is crisp, earthy; birds migrate overhead; and Metsä Group’s Leading Nature Expert, Timo Lehesvirta, bends down to pick up a Boletus edulis (porcini) mushroom. He notes that it is highly sought after by foragers for various culinary uses, but plops it on a stump; such prized fungi are, after all, a natural byproduct of the company’s approach to the forests it helps manage (more on that in a moment).
Right now we’re in Kirkniemi, Lohja, in Southern Finland—but we might as well be anywhere in the country. “Metsä,” aptly, translates to forest. More than 75% of Finland’s land area is covered by forests, and, according to the government, those forests are predominately owned by private individuals.
Thus, as Maija Pohjakallio, VP, Climate and Circular Economy for Metsä Group, told us shortly before heading into the woodlands, “What makes us unique is that our parent company is Metsäliitto Cooperative, which is owned by over 90,000 Finnish forest owners. … It’s very common in everybody’s family. Everybody has at least relatives who own forests.”
To underscore a point: Metsä does not own all of these forests. The members and owners of the co-op since its founding in 1947 do, and Metsä works with them. Finland has three major forest industry companies, but Metsä is the only one that operates on a co-op system. Moreover, the $6.28 billion company at large is divided into different units that use the fruits of those forests for a wide swath of applications—Metsä Board handles paperboard; Metsä Forest covers wood supply and forest services; Metsä Wood creates … wood products; Metsä Fibre handles pulp and sawn timber; and Metsä Tissue produces tissue and grease-proof papers.
It all goes back to those stoic birches swaying tentatively before me in the cold—and Metsä’s regenerative strategies, which reps for the company say represent a more holistic view on forestry. Timo Lehesvirta joined Metsä in 2022 in a completely new role for the co-op. A biologist by training, a couple of decades ago he believed his kind would play a key role in sustainability initiatives on business teams—but that never really happened, aside from a few colleagues.
As he would detail to me later, “I saw an opportunity to influence. Metsä Group is one of the most important forest companies globally, and sustainability has been high on its agenda. I wanted to offer my own input and readiness to make concrete changes.”
Globally, tree plantations account for 45% of planted forests—and around half of them are composed of trees from other parts of the world, leading to the loss of native species and biodiversity. “In … exotic tree species plantations, the starting point is to destroy the original ecosystem,” Lehesvirta says. “You just remove it.”
He adds that the practice is becoming more and more common in Europe, but Metsä was ready to challenge itself beyond existing government legislation and directives. In a follow-up interview, he noted, “There is [the] old joke: What’s the difference between public-sector strategy and private-sector strategy? And the answer is that private sector strategies will be implemented.” Per Lehesvirta, Metsä Group was the first to launch a regenerative forestry initiative, and in doing so the term was used to brand the company’s strategies to halt biodiversity loss.
So, what, exactly, makes forestry regenerative? A lot: Metsä uses only five native tree species commercially out of Finland’s 30. Every tree felled is replaced by four new ones. The company uses a soil inverting process it developed to foster seedling growth. The stump of a cut tree is left in the forest, where it decays and plays a role in fostering other life—like, say, mushrooms. Decaying and dead trees are retained as habitats. As Lehesvirta detailed to me later, “We want to be in a leadership position in the systemic change to maintain and enhance the biodiversity and ecosystem services such as pollination, water [quality] and carbon sink as well as recreational values.”
Still: Why go to these lengths, when other companies would simply slash the budget by slashing and burning?
He is blunt that this is not a nature conservation program. The goal, ultimately, is to increase the value of owners-members’ forests in the long term, for the good of all.
“It’s quite pragmatic,” he says. “And then we come to the question, what kind of forests do you transfer to the next generation?”
Pohjakallio, meanwhile, notes that there is a limit to what people can produce without plantations, on their own land.
“Our strategy is to get more out of less,” she says. “We have to respect the boundaries.”
As an American, in a global world of C-suites and greed politics, it’s a somewhat shocking thing to hear. And it’s as refreshing as it is vexing.
Photo: Lewis Stiefel for Metsä Board
The Mill
About four hours north of that particular forest sits the town of Äänekoski—and Metsä’s Äänekoski bioproduct mill, dubbed “the largest investment in the history of the Finnish forest industry.” It opened in 2017 at a cost of around $1.25 billion. As we snake our way through the industrial site, partially excavated mountains of tan wood chips rise out of the ground in organic contrast to steel and brick.
The mill is an ecosystem of its own, providing a central nexus for any given use of a tree—of which the entire tree is used. And it’s seemingly seamless: Trees arrive via trucks and trains. Logs become sawn timber and plywood; smaller bits of the tree are used to create pulp and bioproducts; the bark, branches, and top, meanwhile, are used for renewable energy. When it comes to creating the company’s signature paperboard, the trees are debarked and chipped, and are then made into pulp fiber by Metsä Fibre—a boon to the on-site Metsä Board, which benefits from a direct, secure, and consistent supply chain.
“We know exactly what kind of pulp we get here, because everything is in our own hands,” Metsä Board Communications Manager Ritva Mönkäre told me later. “I think that’s our advantage.”
Inside the plant, we don Sievi Viper safety shoes, slash-proof gloves, helmets, and other assorted gear, and proceed through a steaming 106.5 decibel labyrinth of pipes and machinery. We emerge at the head of a mammoth machine, a whirring, seemingly endless column that produces paperboard at up to 800 meters per minute. There’s warming, folding, pressing, drying, and beyond—and at the culmination, hulking spools emerge.
From an industrial standpoint, to see it happening in real-time is always a bit miraculous, no matter how many times you witness the sum of thousands and thousands of parts and millions of engineering decisions operating in symphony to produce one single outcome. But the truly wondrous thing is perhaps the one that is happening all around us in Äänekoski.
Again: This entire mill site does not use any fossil fuels. Every single bit of energy it needs is created from its operation.
“That’s circular chemistry,” Maija Pohjakallio said the day before. “Even the emissions can be utilized as raw material.”
For instance, the sulfuric gas that results from the pulping process is captured and utilized to make sulfuric acid, which is used for the mill’s tall oil. (There’s a plant on-site for the sulfuric acid, too—which is the first of its kind, according to Metsä.)
On the whole, as I noted at the outset, the entire operation creates more energy than it needs—2.4 times as much, the excess of which is sold to the national grid.
Still: Why? Why go to these lengths? Yes, there are governmental body mandates and targets—and reps for Metsä have sent me lists of the company’s adherence to various standards, and their sustainability benchmarks at large. But at the center of such operations is usually a wildly passionate and charged individual with utter conviction for what they’re doing. But here, it’s business as usual. Straightforward. I take Mönkäre aside after we leave the mill and fish for quotes, for clues.
When it comes to sustainability, “It’s just part of everything that we do,” she says.
Photo: Lewis Stiefel for Metsä Board
The Future
What does any of this have to do with PRINT, print, or design? Well, to steal from Paul Rand, everything.
“Our paperboards are high quality, but they are found in people’s everyday lives—not only in luxurious end uses but, for example, in cereals, pasta, biscuits, tea as well as pharmaceutical packaging end uses,” Ritva Mönkäre detailed to me later.
At Metsä’s Excellence Center on-site in Äänekoski—decked out in clean Nordic design, and featuring perhaps the most beautiful coat hangers I’ve ever seen—you can get hands-on with mockups of some of those end uses … but not the real ones. Paper buyers tend to be cagey about their clients. But the one thing Metsä can discuss is that Crumbl Cookies boxes are largely on their board. In recent years, Metsä Board’s growth has been fastest in the U.S.—and there’s a good chance that if you haven’t laid hands on one of their products yet, you are very likely to in the near future.
Photo: Zachary Petit
Ultimately, the boxes on display here aren’t just for show. Clients get a value add in the form of this R&D hub for innovation, experimentation, and packaging solutions—which is totally free of charge to them. There’s a VR grocery store simulator trained on eye movements and consumer behavior. There’s prototyping, material analysis, and computer-aided engineering to optimize designs and help clients achieve a pack’s lightest—and thus more socially responsible—form.
“Metsä Board has a process that with less amounts of raw materials, you can make paperboard that functions as well, or even better, than a thicker one,” Maija Pohjakallio noted the previous day. “Small lightweighting can make a big, big difference.”
To wit: As she further detailed, Metsä Board’s folding boxboard output is 200 million a day; if the board were 1% lighter, that would increase production by 2 million units without the use of any additional natural resources.
I ponder: If you’re just going by government standards … why even make that calculation?
Why convince people to make the little plastic window on their snacks smaller?
Why even build this building at all?
*
I’m back at home.
But I still don’t know. I went to Finland, and I never really found out what I was seeking in the first place.
I schedule a Zoom interview with Timo Lehesvirta. It’s odd to see him on screen, divorced from the serene forest where he seemed uniquely at home.
I ask again, in so many words: Why do you and Metsä go to these lengths?
They want to showcase their methods—and the fact that business is ultimately best when you’re exiting fossil fuels. “We want to proudly demonstrate our solution,” he says.
He’s even-keeled, as he was in Kirkniemi, as many Finns generally are. It could be the language barrier or cultural differences between us, sure. But I like to think this is the reason I’ve been unable to solicit a fiery, zealous quote from anyone: At its most elemental, this is fairly straightforward stuff. It’s logical. It’s obvious. Who would not want to live in this world?
It’s all wildly over the top. But it’s also the future. Or at least it should be.
The post Finding the Future of Packaging, in Finland appeared first on PRINT Magazine.