Sappi Ehingen Recognized with 2024 Solenis Sustainability Award for Advancements in CO2 Reduction and Resource Efficiency

Forests are at the heart of society’s action to combat climate change and its impacts. As carbon sinks, trees capture and store carbon, removing significant volumes of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. Forest products meanwhile, provide us with a carbon-neutral alternative to our reliance on fossil fuels. But to ensure that forests reach their full potential as a climate change solution, they must be managed sustainably. This is where PEFC certification comes in.

Heinzel Group is a member of EPIS (European Pulp Industry Sector) and therefore supports the #GreenSource initiative to promote the role of forest-fibre industries in the effort to achieve the EU’s climate neutrality target by 2050. The forest-fibre industry wishes to play a central role in offering solutions that respond to the needs of the European citizens and contribute to a sustainable lifestyle while making sure that forests keep growing, absorbing CO2 and protecting biodiversity.

The Spanish private research organisation CARTIF has completed the first assessment focusing on the environmental and social performance of Metsä Group’s Kuura textile fibre. Kuura is still in a R&D phase and the production process to make it is currently being tested and further developed at a tonne per day demo plant in Äänekoski, Finland. The outcome of the assessment conducted by CARTIF is very good for Kuura. In regard to environmental performance, when comparing to other commercial man-made cellulosic fibres (viscose and lyocell), and to cotton, Kuura shows the lowest impact on climate change, supporting its viability as a sustainable solution in the market of textile fibres (see Figure 1). More specifically, the use of local, sustainably managed wood raw material combined with the use of fully fossil free energy obtained from the existing industrial mill site and with a novel process for the production of Kuura textile fibre result in a product with a clear climate change mitigation potential compared to the use of existing commercial textile fibres.