UPM Pulp Matters 1/2023

New sales team for North America

UPM Fibres is moving forward with the implementation of its commercial strategy for pulp and building a pulp sales organisation in North America. Darren Barker has joined the Pulp sales team as Sales Director, and Jean-François Royer has been appointed Senior Sales Manager. Both bring to UPM several years of commercial experience from North American companies. “My expectation is to grow substantially in North America and become a supplier of choice to this market by building a customer-centric team and capabilities that allow us to reliably offer high quality pulp products from our mills in Uruguay and Finland,” says Barker, who has previously held various roles in areas including global supply chain, IT and divisional business operations. “My goal is to showcase UPM’s sustainable pulp from state-of-the-art pulp mills and build partnerships with customers in North America,” adds Royer, who provides UPM with experience from areas including pulp sales and product quality, as well as production and process development.

capacity from the new pulp mill, the company now believes it is the right time to start selling their pulp in North America. That said, breaking into new markets has traditionally always carried elevated risks for any business. “The potential concern from investors could be due to the fact that North America is a very mature market and demand for pulp, for fibre, is not necessarily growing,” says Wiklund. “It might be growing in the tissue segment, but it is declining in the printing paper sector. But North America is the world’s third biggest pulp market, the product we are bringing to the market, eucalyptus, has different quality characteristics from the locally produced hardwood pulp, and the North American market gives credit to eucalyptus fibre and its technical properties as a superior fibre in certain end-use areas. Hence we believe that there are good prospects for us to develop a viable market there.” A GLOBAL SALES ORGANISATION BOOSTED The greater part of the 2.1 million new tonnes of pulp coming to the market will be delivered to existing customers in Asia and

Darren Barker

Jean-François Royer

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