American Trees + Finnish Companies = Paper

My dad, who drives all over the Upper Midwest delivering paper from plants in Northern Michigan, has pointed out the pervasiveness of Finnish paper companies in North America. See, for instance, the cluster of Stora Enso facilities around the upper Great Lakes, including two mills in Duluth.

This little facet of globalization is endlessly fascinating to me not least because the Finnish companies are operating in places - like northern Minnesota - where there are lots of Finnish-Americans, an odd sort of historical coincidence. And the Finns are only getting more bigger: "Forest product company UPM plans to build North America's largest paper machine in Minnesota." This machine must be a leviathan.

(As an underemployed academic's aside, it sure would be nice to get a research grant to write about the world paper industry...