When Finland's UPM-Kymmene bowed to tough market conditions and shut its Voikkaa paper plant two years ago, Raimo Loytty readily swapped a 30-year career in the mill for a stone mason's chisel.
He and 677 co-workers were among the first victims of heavy layoffs by paper companies facing rising production costs, weak demand growth and overcapacity.
But Loytty turned what could have been a personal disaster into success, starting a stoneworks business with a colleague.
Nor is he alone. The inventiveness of many former forestry workers, along with a shift in Finland's once timber-dominated economy into new areas, has helped limit the economic fallout from the job cuts.
On the face of it, the numbers look bleak.
More than 8,000 forestry jobs have vanished in the past three years in Finland, the world's sixth-largest paper producer with 63,000 employed by the industry. More will go this year.
UPM launched the country's largest-ever layoff programme in May 2006, with a planned 2,500 job cuts over three years, including Loytty's. In October 2007, rival Stora Enso said it would cut 1,100 Finnish positions.
A decision by neighbour Russia to raise wood export duties has made things tougher for forestry firms since some 20 percent of wood used in Finnish paper and pulp mills comes from Russia.
Stora Enso, which plans to close mills this year in the towns of Anjalankoski and Hamina in southeastern Finland and Kemijarvi in northern Finland, has threatened more closures if Russia raises duties as much as it now plans.
So far, though, the layoffs have had little visible effect on Finland's economy, which grew an estimated 4.4 percent in 2007, or on the overall job market, which created 50,000 new positions last year while unemployment fell.
COMMUNITY REINVENTION
The economy's health may be one reason why Loytty and many of his Voikkaa mill colleagues found new work just a year after the closure of one of Kuusankoski's largest employers sent shockwaves through the community.
Back then, residents were convinced the town might take years to recover from the blow.
They demanded the plant be sold to a buyer who would keep it open, while local voters turned away from then-governing Social Democrat party in March 2007 elections.
"People changed quite a lot, happy and joking guys became serious," said Jari Lukkari, 39, a former mechanic at the plant.
"I thought about studying or selling my house and moving somewhere else."
But Lukkari struck lucky, finding work "immediately" at industry maintenance company Enpower, where he now works with many of his former UPM co-workers, although the associated travel has complicated life for the single father.
Timo Mikkela, 44, said it took time to get past his anger.
"At first I was furious and did not want to do anything. But my thoughts changed during the summer and I started an industrial painting course in the autumn," he said.
