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360 Services
pean markets, but there have also been participants from Asia. Metsä Board’s 360 Services team in the United States organises workshops under the same concept for customers in North and South America. The analysed end-uses cover a wide range, and the products to be packaged have ranged from chocolate to luxury perfumes. “We’ve had a great range of participants, and we’ve processed packaging for pharmaceuticals, food and toys, for example,” Nykopp says. Welcome to Äänekoski! The meeting place for the workshops is Metsä Board’s Excellence Centre in Äänekoski in Central Finland. According to Nykopp, the co-creation workshop of- ten includes a visit to the paperboard mill and the or- igin of the raw material, Finnish forests. Forest man- agement, biodiversity, and new materials developed at the Äänekoski integrated mill, such as the Muoto TM product, can also be discussed.
The Excellence Centre hosts doz- ens of workshops every year. In ad- dition to a packaging design stu- dio, there is an R&D laboratory at the Excellence Centre that can analyse and test the performance of packages in, e.g. different tem- peratures and in different humidity conditions. Simulations can be used to test the strength of the packaging solution in different scenarios. This facilitates the crea- tion of packages that are both as lightweight as pos- sible and very durable. The new package can also be viewed through the eyes of the end-user at the Ex- cellence Centre. Virtual reality glasses can be used to view the package in a virtual shopping environment. During the pandemic, the workshops were also moved to an online environment. Workshops held via a remote connection have become a popular op- tion, but live sessions are gaining popularity again.
“Collaboration is what makes the concept unique.”
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