Product renewal takes engineered materials to the future


Text: Pirkko Harrela
Photo: UPM


Jussi Vanhanen
President of UPM's Engineered Materials Business Group

"All Engineered Materials businesses have multiple opportunities for renewing existing products and extending product ranges. Product renewal offers us inspiring potential and will take us to the future.
At the same time, Engineered Materials innovations can even widen
the scope of UPM's business portfolio."


"Renewal stands for totally new products but also evolution of existing products. Thinner and lighter, yet stronger. They are the buzzwords, no matter what the product. And yet competitively priced," Vanhanen describes the nature of product renewal."


"In the labelstock business, for example, we have recently introduced a product family with a thin polypropylene liner which enables packaging companies to run their application machines faster, and printers to save in transportation costs. In the plywood business we have in­troduced WisaTwin, which combines the low weight of spruce with the surface properties of birch plywood."


"Renewal is vital for our customers, too. Instead of merely competing on price, products with new properties help our customers develop new solutions for their own customers. For us, renewal provides a way of staying relevant to our customers," he says.


Vanhanen believes that product renewal and UPM's Biofore thinking make a good fit.  "Enhanced overall economy and good environmental performance are at the core of both."


"In the past few years our development focus has been on cost efficiency. However, UPM has a great tradition of developing new products and businesses."


"Now the three new labelstock factories, an ongoing plywood investment in Savonlinna, Finland, a new UPM ProFi factory in Bruchsal, Germany and an RFID factory in Guangzhou, China – all give us a very efficient production platform. Thanks to them, we now can put more emphasis and resources on product renewal."


"The key is the ability to listen to customer needs, utilise the ideas and development initiatives of our trade partners such as suppliers, combine them with the know-how throughout our own organisation – and then execute with speed and efficiency."