The Kemijarvi Biorefinery is pleased to announce that Bertel Karlstedt, who led the Finnish Valmet’s energy and pulp businesses until 2022, was elected to the board of directors of the company. The Kemijarvi Biorefinery specializes in biomass processing and will build a production plant in Kemijarvi, Finland.
Karlstedt has 35 years of successful track record in industrial management positions. He led Valmet’s energy and pulp businesses with sales of over a billion euros from 2015 to 2022, and supported the generational change of Valmet’s management in 2023. Valmet is a pioneer in biomass processing production solutions and automation, and has been developing and delivering new generation production equipment in the Nordic countries.
Before Valmet, Karlstedt was CEO of Nordkalk for almost 10 years. Nordkalk is a Finnish mining company that operates in several European countries. Karlstedt has also served as CEO of Metso Paper and head of the global paper technology business of Valmet-Rauma and Metso-Paper.
“We are very pleased to welcome an experienced director of the bioproduct business like Bertel onto the board. Bertel leads in a customer centric manner, and that is essential also to the success of Kemijarvi Biorefinery. He led Valmet’s business units in the transformation of the industry towards more versatile and advanced biomass processing, for which Valmet offers its solutions and services. He is well experienced with large industrial investment projects and construction. Bertel also brings to the team his experiences in the management board of a publicly listed company. He has an extensive, international contact network, which will certainly be of tangible benefit when building partnerships of the Kemijarvi Biorefinery, recruiting key personnel and in investor relations,” says Harri Vatanen, board member and shareholder of the Kemijarvi Biorefinery.
Karlstedt started at the beginning of the year as CEO of the Norwegian Circa Group. Circa and the Kemijarvi Biorefinery announced cooperation at the beginning of December. Circa processes biomass into chemicals that offer a more environmentally friendly alternative to chemicals produced from fossil raw materials. The operations of CIRCA and the Kemijarvi Biorefinery have synergistic benefits.
“Biomass processing has taken on a whole new meaning as the economy shifts to the utilization of renewable natural resources. Large investments accelerate the development of new technologies. It is easy to share the environmental values of the Kemijarvi Biorefinery, as well the objective of creating high value add from biomass. I am excited to join the Kemijarvi Biorefinery board and with the opportunity to implement these plans,” says Karlstedt.
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