Metsä Group advances commercial wood-based carbon capture project in Finland
Metsä Group is planning to build Finland’s first commercial-scale plant to capture biogenic, or wood-based, carbon dioxide, as the forestry company seeks to develop new low-carbon value chains using emissions from its pulp production.
The company has launched a pre-engineering project for the proposed carbon capture facility at its Rauma pulp mill in southwestern Finland and has applied for government funding through a reverse auction scheme run by the Ministry of Economic Affairs and Employment to support clean transition investments.
The planned facility would have the capacity to capture around 100,000 tonnes of wood-based carbon dioxide annually from the mill’s flue gases. Metsä Group said the project would represent the first phase of a much larger opportunity, with its operations offering the long-term potential to capture several million tonnes of biogenic carbon dioxide each year.
Rather than permanently storing the captured carbon dioxide, the company intends to supply it as a raw material for the chemicals and synthetic fuels industries, where it could replace fossil-based feedstocks and help reduce lifecycle emissions.
According to Metsä Group, using 100,000 tonnes of wood-based carbon dioxide each year in fuel production could avoid fossil emissions equivalent to those produced annually by nearly 30,000 passenger cars.
Niklas von Weymarn, Chief Executive of Metsä Spring, the group’s innovation company, said the business had been exploring commercial uses for wood-based carbon dioxide for several years and had recently signed its first supply agreements with customers. He added that public funding could play an important role in accelerating the commercialisation of emerging carbon utilisation technologies and supporting the creation of new industrial value chains in Finland.
The company said public funding would cover no more than 30% of the total investment cost. A final investment decision is unlikely before early 2027 and will depend on securing government support, obtaining an environmental permit, completing the pre-engineering work and confirming sufficient customer demand.
An environmental permit application for the Rauma facility was submitted in December 2025, with a decision expected later this year.
Ismo Nousiainen, Chief Executive of Metsä Fibre, said capturing wood-based carbon dioxide would strengthen the company’s strategy of expanding fossil-free business opportunities while improving the competitiveness of its pulp production.
The proposal follows a successful pilot project completed in 2025 in partnership with engineering company Andritz, which demonstrated that the carbon capture technology was sufficiently mature for commercial-scale deployment.
Metsä Group acknowledged that the biggest uncertainty remains the development of markets for products derived from captured biogenic carbon dioxide. The company said large-scale commercial deployment will require coordinated investment across multiple industries, although it believes the Rauma project could help accelerate the emergence of a new carbon utilisation value chain in Finland and support wider industrial decarbonisation.
