Forest products company Metsä Group announced on Thursday that it is beginning redundancy talks across all of its business areas. It said that the measures may lead to the elimination of 800 permanent jobs, including 540 in Finland.

The news is the latest in a string of major job-cut announcements by Finnish heavy industry firms, totalling more than 2,000 in just over a week.

Metsä said it does not plan any further closures of production units. Last spring, it shut down the Suolahti plywood mill north of Jyväskylä, with a loss of some 370 jobs.

The group has some 9,600 employees worldwide, 5,600 of them in Finland. It is owned by the Metsäliitto Cooperative, which in turn is owned by more than 90,000 forest owners.

Metsä CEO Jussi Vanhanen said that the company’s profitability has been undermined by uncertainties in global trade, exchange rate fluctuations and higher raw material costs.

“Weak demand combined with clearly higher costs create an unsustainable equation that must be addressed,” he said in a press release.

Finland just behind Spain in joblessness

The Metsä announcement came on the same day that Eurostat reported that Finland has Europe’s second-highest unemployment. Its jobless rate of 10.1 percent is right behind Spain’s 10.3 percent. The Spanish jobs picture improved slightly in August, while Finland’s worsened.

Neighbouring Sweden is now third with an 8.8 percent jobless rate, followed by Estonia with 8.2 percent.

A day earlier, steelmaker Outokumpu said it would make up to 450 employees redundant. The planned measures are to affect approximately 650 full-time jobs at Outokumpu by the end of 2027. However it remains unclear how many of the job reductions will be in Finland.

Valmet hometown seeks state funding due to massive job cuts

On Tuesday, another forest products firm, Stora Enso, announced layoff talks at its Imatra mills in eastern Finland, affecting a total of 923 people. The negotiations may result in more than 60 people losing their jobs, the company said.

Last week, carmaker Valmet Automotive likewise announced the beginning of labour talks, saying that “the estimated need for adjustments is at most 1,075 person-years”.

On Thursday, Finland’s new Employment Minister Matias Marttinen (NCP) visited the company’s hometown of Uusikaupunki on the west coast. City officials say they will seek state investment support for local firms due to Valmet’s large-scale redundancies.