Uruguay already is home to two huge pulp mills, including this UPM plant on the Uruguay River, and is about to get a third. (Photo courtesy of UPM)
Going paperless,” an oft-stated aim in the digital era, would not seem to be the guiding principle for Uruguay’s export sector. Last year pulp was the country’s biggest foreign-exchange earner at US$1.66 billion, edging out beef at $1.63 billion. And on July 23, UPM of Finland announced it will invest US$2.7 billion to build the biggest pulp plant in the world in Uruguay. Uruguay already is home to two enormous pulp plants, both on the banks of the Uruguay River. One is owned by UPM, and the other by a partnership comprising Finland’s Stora Enso and the Chilean company Arauco. Though the country’s 2018 pulp-export earnings benefited from a 30% increase in world pulp prices last year—its actual export volume fell 5% in 2018—pulp and other forest products including wood, paper and cardboard clearly have become a mainstay of the Uruguayan economy. At... [Log in to read more]
