the aim of the kuitu or fibre progranmme is to raise the competitiveness of papermakers and manufacturers of related equipment through more economical use of energy. the targets to be reached by 1993 are to find ways of reducing, through process modifications, the specific energy consumption in mechanical pulping by 10-20 , to determine the energy-saving potential of a selected number of new pulping processes and to establish the theoretical limits for energy saving in mechanical pulping. in practice this would mean cutting the growth in energy consumption by 3-4 percentage points by 1995 and by 6-10 percentage points by the year 2000. as the programme did not begin until spring 1989 onlyafewresultsareso far available. some directly exploitable results have been obtained, especially in the coorporate sector, although it is too early to predict how well the programme's targets are likely to be met. at this stage, when most projects are only half completed, isolated results can be presented, but there is not yet enough material to provide an overall picture this interim report describes the situation and results from research projects and company projects. research has focused on investigating the basic mechanisms of the groundwood and tmp processes and on the potential of a number of completely new pulping processes. in the corporate sector, the accent has been on improving existing processes. the results that can be utilized in practice concern development of the super-pressure groundwood process and the selective plate patterns used in tmp processes