Iggesund Paperboard’s mills get top marks

EcoVadis is the leading system for assessing and rating the suppliers of global companies and has done more than 45,000 evaluations in 150 countries. Companies using EcoVadis include Coca-Cola, Johnson & Johnson, Nestlé, L’Oréal and Heineken.

“This is one of many confirmations that Iggesund Paperboard and its parent company, the Holmen Group, have a very strong sustainability programme,” said Johan Granås, sustainability communications manager at Iggesund. “The issues have shifted over time from being purely environmental ones to now encompassing the entire field of sustainability.”

Both Iggesund Mill and its sister mill at Workington have received the highest rating, the Gold Standard. They are both thereby among the top one percent of all the companies assessed by EcoVadis and are among the two top percent of the assessed companies in the paper industry.

Over the last ten-year period, the Holmen Group has appeared on indexes of the world’s 100 most sustainable companies, drawn up by both the UN’s Global Compact and the Corporate Knights. The Group has also been repeatedly named by the Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP), as a leader in the work against climate change.

“It’s becoming more and more important to be able to document your sustainability work so that customers know where we stand in this regard,” Granås added. “That’s where EcoVadis and similar systems come in. They are a major advance in simplifying the exchange of information between customers and suppliers.”

At Iggesund Paperboard, sustainability issues have been a key focus for decades, and, for example, are always included in discussions about possible investments.

“It’s easy to point to business deals where our sustainability position was a decisive factor, and the importance of these issues will only increase in future,” said Granås.