diff --git a/src/ooxml/java/org/apache/poi/xssf/streaming/GZIPSheetDataWriter.java b/src/ooxml/java/org/apache/poi/xssf/streaming/GZIPSheetDataWriter.java
index 4008940c8..dbe7c12a3 100644
--- a/src/ooxml/java/org/apache/poi/xssf/streaming/GZIPSheetDataWriter.java
+++ b/src/ooxml/java/org/apache/poi/xssf/streaming/GZIPSheetDataWriter.java
@@ -60,7 +60,7 @@ public class GZIPSheetDataWriter extends SheetDataWriter {
      */
     @Override
 	public Writer createWriter(File fd)throws IOException {
-        return new OutputStreamWriter(new GZIPOutputStream(new FileOutputStream(fd)));
+        return new OutputStreamWriter(new GZIPOutputStream(new FileOutputStream(fd)), "UTF-8");
     }
 
 
diff --git a/src/ooxml/java/org/apache/poi/xssf/streaming/SheetDataWriter.java b/src/ooxml/java/org/apache/poi/xssf/streaming/SheetDataWriter.java
index 95f8f515a..fbdda6543 100644
--- a/src/ooxml/java/org/apache/poi/xssf/streaming/SheetDataWriter.java
+++ b/src/ooxml/java/org/apache/poi/xssf/streaming/SheetDataWriter.java
@@ -22,9 +22,10 @@ package org.apache.poi.xssf.streaming;
 import java.io.BufferedWriter;
 import java.io.File;
 import java.io.FileInputStream;
-import java.io.FileWriter;
+import java.io.FileOutputStream;
 import java.io.IOException;
 import java.io.InputStream;
+import java.io.OutputStreamWriter;
 import java.io.Writer;
 import java.util.Iterator;
 
@@ -84,7 +85,7 @@ public class SheetDataWriter {
      * @param  fd the file to write to
      */
     public Writer createWriter(File fd)throws IOException {
-        return new BufferedWriter(new FileWriter(fd));
+        return new BufferedWriter(new OutputStreamWriter(new FileOutputStream(fd), "UTF-8"));
     }
 
     /**