Project Valmet: New roads – Business planning in fibre converting

The partner

Valmet is the leading global developer and supplier of technologies, automation and services for the pulp, paper, and energy industries. Valmet’s technology offering consists of pulp mills, tissue, board, paper production lines, and power plants for bio-energy production. Additionally, Valmet offers advanced automation solutions and services ranging from maintenance outsourcing to mill and plant improvements and spare parts.

The challenge

Fibre converting technology can replace plastics with biodegradable and renewable pulp in packaging materials and disposables. The challenge of this Aalto Thesis project is to consider the business opportunity created by this field from the perspective of Valmet. The analysis includes business and technology perspectives to understand Valmet’s capabilities to enter the field and seek out the most feasible expansion scenarios.

• How should Valmet enter a new business in the field of fibre converting?

The company has already started developing the prerequisites for the expansion and aims to move closer to the end customer through this new line of business. 

The objective

This Aalto Thesis project aims to offer views on the viable business scope of the 3D fibre technology and the potential market entry strategies. The project outcomes aim to support Valmet’s decision-making process by answering which markets to enter with the new technology and how the expansion should be conducted.

The student team

The student team consists of two Aalto Master’s students from different fields:

Noora Puputti

Finance | School of Business

• How should the expansion to fibre converting be conducted? What kind of business model is suitable for the technology, and how the business can be built with current capabilities?

Karoliina Pellinen

Strategy and Venturing | School of Science

• What are the potential uses and markets for the technology? What kinds of technological synergies are there with Valmet’s current offering, and on the other hand, what kind of cannibalization effects there are for Valmet’s existing business?

The time frame of this project is February 2021 – September 2021.

Aalto Thesis is a project-based and work-life-oriented Master’s thesis model executed in a multidisciplinary student team. In the project, a group of 2-4 students from different Aalto Schools jointly solve a multidimensional challenge given by a work-life partner. Each student writes an individual thesis from the perspective of their field, guided by their supervisor, but all the students' topics are connected through a common challenge. The students receive a grant of 5 000 €.