I'm joined today by CFO Per Bjarne Lyngstad, and we are broadcasting live from the Biorefinery in Norway. Here is the agenda for today's call. First, the outlook for the latest quarterly report. Secondly, currency and commodity inputs based on public data. Last, a Q&A session. Participants are welcome to submit questions via the chat during the call. I will now hand over to Per Bjarne who will present the key points from the outlook communicated in the Q4 report.
Thank you, Pål Espen, and good afternoon, everyone. I will start with reiterating the key points from the outlook for both the full year and the first quarter of 2026. When relevant, refer to comments on the outlook given in the Q&A sessions at the webcast for the fourth quarter on the fourth February this year. I will start with the BioSolutions, where we expect the sales volume to be approximately 340,000 tonnes for the full year, with continued growth in the agriculture segment. The first quarter sales volume is expected to be around 80,000 tonnes, more or less in line with 81,000 tonnes we had in the first quarter of 2025.
We got one question regarding BioSolutions at the webcast, which was related to our reference to strong agriculture markets and improvements in BioVanillin. Except for the first quarter, EBITDA in 2025 was not much stronger than 2024 for BioSolutions. The question was, what can you say about the developments in other markets than agriculture and BioVanillin? In our answer, we reminded the audience that we have seen increased costs throughout the year affecting EBITDA. We have cost increases at our U.S. plants, and also, other costs exceeded the general inflation. On the market side, agriculture is clearly one of the main driving segments for the growth. We have seen weaknesses in certain markets within construction, and also oilfield chemicals have been weaker throughout 2025.
Turning to the outlook for BioMaterials, where the sales volume in 2026 is forecast to be in the range of 155,000-160,000 tonnes, significantly above the 146,000 tonnes in 2025. Sales volume of highly specialized grades is expected to be slightly above the 2025 level. The average sales price in sales currency is expected to be 3%-4% lower in the first half of 2026 compared with the second half of 2025, and this is partly due to the mix of customers and products. The European cellulose ether producers are expected to continue facing competition from Chinese cellulose ether producers within the construction segments. These customers normally buy speciality cellulose from Borregaard and other wood pulp specialty producers.
The first quarter sales volume in BioMaterials is expected to be in the range of 37,000-39,000 tonnes, in line with the first quarter of 2025. At the webcast in February, there were two questions regarding BioMaterials outlook for volume and prices. The first one was about the specialty cellulose competition from China. Has the competition from China on specialty cellulose intensified in recent months, or is it on par with 2025? Our response was that there has always been some imports from China, either with cotton linters as a raw material for cellulose ethers or cellulose ethers in the low-end segments, typically to construction. Chinese cellulose ethers are of GMO origin and cannot be used for other applications than construction. That means that they can't really go into food and pharma.
Over the past five years, we have seen exports gradually increasing from China. During the last year, with the tariffs in the U.S. and also with low construction activity in China, we see what we see in many other industries, that the overcapacity in China is being exported. When it can't be exported to the U.S. without tariffs, even more is coming into Europe. We clearly see an increasing trend of imports of the cellulose ethers products from China into Europe. Also remember that Borregaard's strategy has been to move more of our cellulose production going into ethers to food and pharma applications, and we have succeeded quite well with that over the last years. That's been our strategy, and we've seen this coming, and we've changed our strategy. The second question was related to the price reduction in specialty cellulose and mix effects.
With regards to BioMaterials and the 3%-4% price decline in the first half compared with the second half last year, we were asked to shed some more light on the mix effect. If the decline only partly is due to mix, what are the other reasons for the drop? As we said in the outlook, the reduction in the average price is partly explained by mix, which means mix of products and customers. We sold about 146,000 tons in 2025. We expect to sell 10,000-15,000 tons more in 2026, which means an additional volume with a mix with different pricing. Also, within the construction segment to cellulose ethers, we have done some selective price adjustments.
We have the 4,000-5,000 tons we need to sell to the market during the year from the production disruption we had in the third quarter last year. Together, these elements explain why the average sales price will be negatively impacted in the range of 3%-4%. Borregaard's main competitor in specialty cellulose, Rayonier Advanced Materials, presented their outlook for 2026 in the beginning of March. They claim that 85% of their specialty cellulose business was arranged at an average price increase of 18% over 2025, with expected volume loss of about 20% compared with 2025. The other 15% is still in discussion according to Rayonier Advanced Materials and may not be decided until the back half of this year.
If successful in those discussions, the remaining 15% will only come at an average price increase significantly higher than the 18% level, again, according to RYAM. On a question on ether-grade cellulose, RYAM admitted that the market is challenged, and particularly in Europe, confirming what Borregaard said. This is also according to RYAM, due to the ethers coming out of China. However, RYAM claimed that they have achieved near to 20% price increase across ether grades in Europe. Obviously, RYAM is prioritizing value over volume in 2026. If they are successful with the antidumping case against Brazil and Borregaard and the countervailing case against Brazil, they will dominate the U.S. specialty cellulose market. However, for the markets outside the U.S., the risk for RYAM is that they will lose significant volumes if they achieve their price ambitions.
The final outcome of the U.S. antidumping case may also affect several speciality cellulose markets. According to RYAM, a preliminary decision on the countervailing duty case against Brazil is expected this month. If this case ends up in favor of RYAM, Brazil might be excluded from the U.S. market, where they are the largest supplier. At Borregaard's fourth quarter webcast, we got a question if we could give a ballpark figure on how much we had spent on U.S. legal costs in the fourth quarter and how much we expected the total sum to be. We answered that we had passed NOK 10 million in costs for these investigations, most of it in the fourth quarter. In the process, we have answered a lot of questionnaires, so hopefully that part of the process is coming to an end soon.
It's difficult to estimate how much more we will spend, but we think the total costs for the antidumping case on Borregaard's behalf will be somewhere between NOK 15 million and NOK 20 million. Moving on to the outlook for Fine Chemicals, where sales prices for bioethanol are expected to be largely in line with the levels we saw in 2025. The sales volume for fine chemical intermediates is expected to increase compared with 2025. To the outlook and the development in other important cost components, where the wood cost in the first half of 2026 is expected to be around 15% lower than in the first half of 2025. As to the other energy costs, remember that energy consumption is normally higher during the winter and lower in the summer season.
About 15% of Borregaard's energy consumption is dependent on energy spot prices for electricity and LNG. For LNG, we have a one-month delay compared with the market price, which is the Dutch TTF. Electricity prices in Norway so far in the first quarter have been significantly above last year's prices. Part of the explanation for the higher electricity price is a colder winter in Norway this year compared with last year, which may also impact energy consumption. On the other hand, LNG prices have been quite a bit lower than last year so far, taking the one-month delay into consideration. In total, spot prices on energy will not have much of an impact on Borregaard's energy costs in the first quarter compared with the first quarter last year.
Higher energy consumption due to the colder weather will have a negative impact on costs, however, not very substantial. At the end of the outlook presentation, we remind you about the uncertainty in the global economy, particularly related to tariffs, war, and conflicts which may impact Borregaard's markets and cost. The ongoing war in the Middle East has already started to impact shipments and coastal deliveries of goods. Higher LNG and oil prices are starting to impact the prices on energy and also on chemicals. So far, the total impact for Borregaard is limited, partly due to the one-month delay in LNG prices. However, if the war continues for a longer period with limited supply of oil and gas, it will hurt the global economy.
Having completed the outlook and questions from the fourth quarter presentation, we will point to one more element which will have an impact on 2026 results. Borregaard has a currency hedging strategy that delays the impact on changes in currency rates. Using currency rates as of the third of February, which were when we, or the day before we presented the fourth quarter result, the net currency impact for the full year of 2026 was estimated to be positive by approximately NOK 55 million compared with 2025. The corresponding impact for the first quarter of 2026 was estimated to be negative by about NOK 5 million compared with the first quarter of 2025.
So far in the first quarter, the Norwegian kroner has strengthened by 3%-4% compared with the fourth quarter of 2025 using Borregaard's currency basket. Compared with the first quarter last year, the Norwegian kroner has strengthened 7%-8%, mainly due to a weaker US dollar. If the present currency rates continue the rest of the month, the net currency impact in the first quarter compared with the first quarter last year will more or less be in line with the -NOK 5 million we estimated at the Q4 webcast on the third of February.
With today's rates for the rest of the year, the net currency impact for 2026 is also expected to be slightly lower than the NOK 55 million, about NOK 15 million, maybe even NOK 20 million lower with what we estimated in early February compared to that. I will now hand over to Pål Espen, who will lead a Q&A session with questions asked in the chat function of this webcast.
Thank you, Per Bjarne. We will now open the Q&A session. Please submit your questions via the chat function. We already had someone here. The first one from Elliott Jones in Danske Bank. Given the Middle East escalation, how will this affect the import potential from Chinese producers and the cost of the rival petrochemical products?
Yeah, for us, I think it's too early to give any quantification of that. Transportation is the challenges in transportation mainly centralized around the Middle East and the Hormuz Strait, and transportation between Europe and Asia is going more or less normally. Of course, the cost of transportation has started to increase and will further increase. The big question is really how much oil will be supplied to the market, and that remains to be seen. I don't think we are there yet that we can quantify this a lot. The main worry is really about the world economy running into a recession.
We think the Chinese product will not be much impacted, at least in the short run, because what we are competing with is not oil-based products. It's based on cotton lint or cellulose on the cellulose side.
Thank you. The next one is from Magnus Melvær Rasmussen in SEB. Can you benefit from Rayonier's volume loss in 2026, or are you sold out?
I don't think we have a lot of flexibility in our volume because we were quite early out securing volume and customers has been quite willing to commit to volumes. You can see that on our outlook for the volume, which was much higher than last year. I don't think we have a lot of flexibility there, but some we will try to benefit from that. Again, we have to see also how this works out for RYAM outside the U.S. I think they will struggle if they really achieve the prices they say they have achieved. Also, the U.S., they will struggle on the volume side. Of course, the customers don't have that many alternatives in the short run.
Thank you, Per Bjarne. How does the conflict now in the Middle East affect you? Any extra cost to gas or sulfur already in Q1? And what about Q2? This was from Magnus Rasmussen again.
Now, I mentioned what we see so far in Q1 and there it's mainly related to shipments in March where we see some increases in the cost. Some increases there will be. Again, it's difficult still to quantify it. If the war goes on, I think we will see an increase in Q2 too. We see LNG prices varying a lot. Today they were about EUR 70 per MWh. They have been most of the time after the war started below EUR 50. You have these fluctuations and of course oil price is fluctuating. It's more a question of lack of supply of natural gas and oil. How that will play out, it's difficult to tell.
Of course, Borregaard on the energy side at least has quite a high share of electricity secured.
Thank you. Another one from Elliott Jones-Myklebust regarding BioMaterials prices. You know, BioMaterials prices down 3%-4% in first half versus second half last year. As you see it now, do you expect any changes to this level for the second half?
This year a rather large share of our volume is on annual contracts. We have a certain percentage that's up for negotiations in the middle of the year. Again, it's a bit early to see whether we can achieve any price increases. We don't have a lot of flexibility there, at least from where we see it now.
Another one from Magnus Melvær Rasmussen. Are you looking into potential surcharges if costs increase as it did in 2022?
Of course, that is always an option. We haven't started to discuss that yet because we need to see more of how long this war will last and how severe the impact on oil and gas prices and supply will be. Of course that's something Borregaard don't like to do. We don't want like to mix that into the negotiations with customers. If we see high or large cost increases, that will be something that we will have to look at.
Another one from Elliott Jones-Myklebust, more into Middle East. Can you please provide some color as to the potential effect to both pricing and demand for your products as a result of the Middle East escalation?
Again, it's more a question on the world economy and how that will be impacted because many of our products we have follow more or less GDP growth. If that comes down, we will see an effect on our products also. Historically, Borregaard has been quite resilient if we go into a kind of recession because we have so many products, we are into so many applications. A higher oil price might have an impact on pricing for some of our specialties because we are competing with fossil based products. The fossil based products, like our products, are quite advanced, so the oil price is not a big factor on the cost side for competing products either.
There will be some impact if this is going to last for a longer period.
Thank you. We are experiencing a web delay, and we'll continue shortly. That seems to conclude today's Q&A session. Thank you for joining the pre-close call, and thank you for your interest in Borregaard. As a reminder, this call marks the start of our silent period. The annual report will be released the twenty-sixth of March, together with a notice of the annual general meeting, which will be held the tenth of April. We look forward to the next update. Thank you and goodbye.
Thank you.