Speaker Bios

Franz Rappold
Member of the Management Board
Mayr-Melnhof

Mr Rappold graduated in 1977 from "Höhere Technische Bundeslehr- und Versuchsanstalt" in Vienna with a degree in Mechanical Engineering.

He has worked at Mayr-Melnhof Karton since 1983, and became a Member of the Management Board of Mayr Melnhof AG in 2002. From 1972-83 he was the head of the department Packaging department and Assistant to the General Manager at Austrowaren Vienna. He was the president of "Pro Carton" Europe until 2005, and currently is the president of Cepi Carton Brussels and the Association of European Cartonboard Producers. He is an executive member of VDP/VMK Germany (Paper + Cartonboard Association).

Rocky Goodnow
Senior Economist
RISI

Rocky Goodnow has been a timber economist with RISI since 2002. Mr. Goodnow is responsible for the RISI Timber Models, which are used in the analysis of the future demand for wood fiber in North American markets, regional timber supplies, and the potential returns of timberland investments. In addition, he is the key contributor to the analysis and production of RISI's North American Timber Forecast and other RISI timber related publications and studies.

Mr. Goodnow attended Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, where he earned both a B.S. in Forestry and a M.S. in Forest Economics and Management.

Scott Howard
Senior Economist, Macroeconomics
RISI

Scott Howard has worked for RISI's Macroeconomic Service for three years. He is the editor of RISI's Monthly Economic Commentary and the Economic Outlook chapters that appear in all RISI forecasts. In addition, Scott has contributed to a variety of multi-client studies and consulting projects and has spoken at RISI conferences in North America, Latin America, and Asia. His primary responsibility is collecting, analyzing, forecasting, and communicating macroeconomic data and its relevance to clients throughout the forest product industry. He holds a bachelor's degree in economics from Bucknell University in Lewisburg, Pennsylvania. Scott currently resides in Boston, Massachusetts.

Kurt Schaefer
Vice President, Fiber
RISI

Kurt's responsibilities at RISI are focused on the area of wood pulp. He publishes a monthly commentary and forecast on the world pulp market, World Pulp Monthly. He also produces to RISI's long-term pulp forecasts, focusing on variables such as pulp consumption, capacity, production, production costs, and pricing. Just prior to joining RISI, Kurt was Director of Pulp & Paper Forecaster. As the sole economist working on Forecaster, he was responsible for forecasting prices and market conditions across all of the major grades of paper and paperboard in North America. His work on Forecaster included developing detailed end-user driven demand models for the key grades, including newsprint, coated papers, and containerboard. He also directed a number of editorial projects, including a major long-term study of global newsprint markets. He reached ABD status in the Ph.D. program in Economics at the University of Virginia.
In 1995, he received the designation of Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA) from the Association of Investment Management and Research (AIMR).

Esko Uutela
Consultant
RISI

Esko Uutela was born in Finland and has worked as pulp and paper industry consultant for his whole professional career of more than 30 years. He graduated from the Helsinki School of Economics (Marketing) in 1976 and from the University of Helsinki (Faculty of Forestry) in 1979. Since 1991 he is residing in Germany.
After working for close to 18 years for a large forest industry consulting company in Helsinki and Munich, Mr. Uutela decided to establish his own forest industry consulting company EU Consulting in Starnberg, close to Munich in Germany in August 1994. During the past years, EU Consulting has increasingly specialised in offering consulting services for two sectors: the tissue and recycled fibre businesses. As of March 2007, RISI Inc. of the United States is the new owner of EU Consulting.
Mr. Uutela has carried out numerous private client projects, as well as published regularly worldwide, comprehensive multi-client studies on tissue business developments and global recycled fibre markets.

Sampo Timonen
Consultant
RISI

Sampo Timonen joined RISI in 2008 as the Director of European Graphic Paper. He is one of Europe's leading Pulp and Paper industry analysts with nearly a decade of industry-specific expertise.

Prior to joining RISI, Timonen served as Equity Analyst at Handelsbanken AB, heading up their pulp and paper research. At Handelsbanken, Timonen’s coverage of companies included UPM, Stora Enso, M-real, Norske Skog, Holmen, Ahlstrom and their international peer companies. Before Handelsbanken, he worked as Equity Analyst at Glitnir Bank (FIM Group) for three years. There, he analyzed Pöyry, Kemira and Ruukki Group in addition to those companies mentioned earlier. Previous to Glitnir Bank, Timonen was Research Manager at Oy Keskuslaboratorio Ab (KCL). Responsibilities included project management of Future Watch, a forest industry trend-spotting and SWOT analysis program. Prior to KCL, Timonen served as Market Analyst at Myllykoski Paper Oy, forecasting demand and prices of newsprint, SC and LWC papers. He began his career in 1999 at M-real Kirkniemi mills and M-real (Board Division).

Timonen's analysis is now featured in RISI's European Graphic Paper Forecast, Paper Trader Europe and various Viewpoints and features on RISI's main website.

Ville Henttonen
Product Manager, Cost Benchmarking
RISI

Ville Henttonen is a Product Manager in RISI's Cost Benchmarking Services. Ville holds a Master of Science degree in Forest Products Technology from Helsinki University of Technology, Finland. Since joining RISI's Brussels office in 2005, Ville has worked on several cash manufacturing cost analyses, using proven methodology to estimate cost competitiveness of existing pulp and paper mills. His recent publications include competitive cost studies of International Coated and Uncoated Woodfree Papers, European Recycled and Virgin Cartonboard, and European Linerboard and Corrugating Medium.

Ken Waghorne
Vice President, Packaging Products
RISI

Ken has specialized in the paper packaging markets for RISI since 1983. He provides detailed monthly and quarterly analysis and forecasts of the North American paper packaging markets as well as single- and multi-client studies. His contributions to the RISI multiclient studies include the detailed analysis of the international containerboard markets, sector-by-sector forecasts for the U.S. folding carton industry, and an analysis of the paper packaging markets for Latin America. Ken holds a Master of Science degree in Forest Economics from Virginia Tech and his Bachelor of Science degree in Forestry from LSU.