Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to this Q2 financial presentation of Norske Skog ASA. In brief, we had a quarter impacted significantly by the COVID-19 situation. The national lockdown restrictions across the globe impacted significantly on our markets, and demand was down in all regions across all products. The EBITDA reported NOK 138 million, including a gain from the sale of the Tasmanian forest, which we completed in the quarter, meaning that the underlying EBITDA of the group was a weak NOK 52 million. However, we did announce an entry into packaging in the Q2, which we have worked on for a significant amount of time, and the project conversions in Golbey and Bruck have been well received by the general market and the packaging world.
First production is expected in the first half of 2023, with an annual effect on EBITDA of a positive EUR 70 million-EUR 80 million when fully converted. As mentioned, we completed the Tasmanian forest sale in the Q2. This has been announced for some time and generated a significant positive cash return to the company, a very good transaction. The financial position remains robust. We have, in the quarter, paid dividend of the first 325 NOK of the 625 possible, and we do have a cash position of about NOK 1.5 billion, with a net interest-bearing debt of around NOK 300 million at the end of the Q2. This is also somewhat impacted by currency, so all in all, I think we can say that it's a robust financial position.
Coming a little bit back to the COVID-19 pandemic, the forest and industry in general in Norway has seen very little support from the authorities, despite a number of packages to the general public and to different businesses. So Norske Skog and heavy users of energy see a need for reindustrialization of Norway in order to reach green targets for the future. If we look at the EBITDA and the bridge from the Q1 to the Q2, main impact, as I've already mentioned, volumes. There's also a price effect, which is significantly negative, with more than NOK 100 million. This is, to a large extent, the company trying to substitute lost volumes in core markets in Europe and Australia into lower-priced Asian markets. The pricing itself in our main markets was quite stable in the quarter.
A small positive effect on variable costs, despite the fact that variable costs in general have come down. We have not seen a significant factor of this. Probably that will be more pronounced in the second half of the year. Fixed cost was more immediate, as we had temporary layoffs of most of our facilities due to the market downtime, and most authorities in the countries we work in have responded with some kind of a corona-based compensation system for temporary layoffs. Effects are slightly positive, while other effects are negative, mainly related to the fact that we had significant one-off positives in the Q1. I've already mentioned a strong balance sheet, cash position of around NOK 1.5 billion, a little bit down in the quarter because of the weak operating cash flow, but also because we paid a dividend and because we continue to invest.
We have announced the boiler investment in Bruck in Austria that is starting to consume cash now, as a lot of physical work is ongoing. But we also have the energy efficiency projects at the Saugbrugs, the so-called Next Terminator project, which is also supported by Enova. So we are, despite the downtime we're taking, continuing to invest in our also Norwegian infrastructure. So all in all, a strong cash position. If we look very briefly at the two operating segments, starting with Europe, there is no change to the underlying and the reported EBITDA, NOK 75 million for the quarter. If we look at the markets, we have seen roughly a 20% decline throughout May on a year-to-date basis. We indicated after the Q1 that we see decreases of about two times negative growth in GDP in Europe.
I think that's roughly the same guidance we can give now. There will be somewhat higher volumes in the second half, but the market will probably be down around 20% on a total year basis. We have seen raw materials coming down. We have seen prices unchanged in the quarter. We have some headwind from the market in general, but we have also favorable forex. So all in all, we have tried to do what we can under difficult circumstances, and I think we have performed reasonably well in the market considering. In Australia, the underlying performance is weak. We had almost a zero EBITDA on an underlying basis in the Q1, turning negative in the Q2. The reported figure is better because of the gain from the forest sale.
However, the market impact in Australia and New Zealand locally is even more pronounced in Europe, and decreases of up to 25% with also some closures of titles from our publishers. So in a very difficult circumstance, our organization is still doing the best they can, trying to cut costs out and optimize in a difficult environment. However, this performance is clearly not something we can live with for a very long period of time. Moving to the strategy, we have said a number of times that we are indeed moving into renewable packaging. We want to become a leading European producer of renewable packaging. We have a strong position to enter that market. We have announced it, and people have reacted positively to that, both in the packaging world and in the financial world. Publication paper will remain our business for a long period of time.
We will still optimize and improve that. The infrastructure will be different going forward, clearly. And finally, there is a big project portfolio of fiber and energy projects, particularly in Norway and New Zealand, that we are quite excited about. To illustrate this, we do see that there is quite some interesting potential here. We have talked about renewable packaging and an annual impact of EBITDA between EUR 70 million-EUR 80 million from the investment of more than 750,000 tons of containerboard. We will also, as illustrated here by the lighter green boxes, we also see expanded EBITDA from fiber and energy. Our pellets production in New Zealand is already this year generating about NZD 5 million EBITDA, which, as you can see from the total region, becomes an important factor.
We do see that further investments and further opportunities in this space will continue to expand our EBITDA going forward. Just a few words about the packaging investments that we have announced. Two projects, one in Golbey, France, to replace PM1 from newsprint into 550,000+ recycled containerboard capacity. This will be a big project, almost EUR 250 million is the estimated investment cost. At the same time, we're also together with Veolia and other partners building boilers to secure both competitive steam, but also the total energy optimization of the site with green energy. In Austria, we are doing a conversion of the newsprint to small newsprint machine, PM3, from 125,000 to 210,000 tons of recycled containerboard capacity, and total estimated CapEx just under EUR 100 million.
Again, also a significant investment taken into consideration that we have already announced a EUR 72 million construction project of a boiler, which will generate somewhere between EUR 19 million and EUR 20 million of additional EBITDA. We will become a major packaging company in Europe. We will come into a growing market, and we do believe that we will have the most cost-competitive mills being able to supply products that the customers in this space will need. So we are quite excited. We run full speed ahead on the project. All efforts are now being put into enabling a product start in the first half of 2023. I briefly mentioned the pellets facility in New Zealand. That has maybe gone a little bit under the radar, both internally and externally, as this has been ramped up now to 85,000 tons.
We are, as I said, expecting earnings of about NZD 5 million this year. This is a very green project. It's fiber residues and geothermal energy that produces pellets, which again produces energy for various consumers. Quite excitedly, Fonterra, which is the world's largest dairy operation, has decided to change some of their boilers, reducing carbon emissions, and do a contract with us for pellets from Nature's Flame. It's local products, which are not shipped for a very long distance. It's a very efficient green investment, and we do see further growth opportunities in this space. Coming to Norway briefly, we have been developing at the Saugbrugs in Halden since 2010 a cellulose nanofibrils, which is called CEBINA, which is our trademark.
We have now tested this out, and we have a pilot plant, which originally was meant to produce a strengthened enhancer for our own paper. But this has now gone further, and we have done customer testing both in drilling fluids for the oil business, into glue customers, and also coatings for the paints business. So quite excited about CEBINA. We think that you will hear much more about this. This is a very scalable product, and we think that the market reception based on the test we have done so far will be quite interesting. Moving down under again, we have also done something else in the Q2, which is a relatively important milestone for us. We have increased our ownership stake in the Circa Group from 10 to 27.7%.
Circa is an Australian-based developer of sustainable biochemicals, and we operate their commercial demonstration plant at our Boyer mill in Tasmania. This is quite an interesting product, which can be used as an additive into pharmaceutical industries. We do think that this will be one of the future petrochemical products into pills and medicine is not a great idea and will probably be prohibitive once the regulators in North America and Europe will see an alternative for this. Towards the bottom of the page, you can see that this is even possible to put into possible COVID-19 treatments, including present demonstrations and products in the pipeline for that. Clearly, just to illustrate a big potential, it's still a bit of a long-term game, but we have now consolidated our position.
We have a big stake in this company, and we will support Circa going forward in quite an exciting market space, we believe. I mentioned that the COVID pandemic is threatening Norwegian industry, not only in the forest sector, but certainly also in mining and metals and other major energy-intensive industries. We are launching a green restructuring fund, which we think the government should do, of NOK 10 billion to support investment in energy-intensive industry. Norway was, to a large extent, built on energy-intensive industries. There are 40-50 large-scale companies doing this today. Most of them have been hit by the corona pandemic. In addition, major investments into this sector have been almost non-existent from 20 years, as the oil industry has taken almost all investment power in industry in Norway.
We think this is a prerequisite for being climate neutral by 2030 or by 2050 or whatever the targets eventually will be. And even more importantly for us is the fact that this is an infrastructure which is there today, which can even be destroyed if we do not invest going forward here for value creation and job creations in local communities in rural Norway. Importantly, we do not suggest new channels to manage this fund. We believe that Enova and Innovation Norway and maybe similar institutions which have experience with large-scale investments into industry are very well suited for this. And just to remind everyone, in order to create green energy going forward and to invest in Norway, we do need to have a political framework which is stable. We do not need changes in grid tariffs. We do not need more taxes on road transportation.
We do not need a CO2 scheme that is tampered with. We need an energy market which is efficient and does improve Norwegian competitive industry. This is all important. We will, Norske Skog, will work with the authorities, with the national unions, with the National Employers Association in order to make this happen through the autumn. Finally, let me just summarize the outlook. I think in the short term, obviously with the pandemic, it has been important for us to secure the health and safety of our employees. We have managed to do that thus far. We will make sure we are not relaxing any standards, so we will do that also going forward. We need to adapt to market changes. The market is coming down relatively rapidly. We will actively do capacity adjustments. We have taken temporary downtime.
We may have to change also the number of machines we run going forward. At the same time, a robust balance sheet, which I have talked about also before in this presentation, we will remain in. We have a dividend policy. We will adhere to the dividend policy while remaining financially disciplined. In the bit longer term, we will become a leading producer in Europe of renewable packaging, a big competitive player into that market. We will remain a full-range supplier of all publication paper grades. There is no change to that, despite the fact that we are converting out of some newsprint machines and balancing the market again.
In Norway, we have a big infrastructure. We are a big part of the forest value chain. We will continue to develop that strong position, doing new products based on Norwegian fiber. And finally, the Australian operations, which clearly have a result subpar presently, we need to still improve and reposition that. As I mentioned, quite exciting opportunities both in Australia and New Zealand to build on going forward. On that note, ladies and gentlemen, I thank you for your attention.