Cartonboard material from BillerudKorsnäs, a leading global provider of sustainable packaging materials and solutions, has been used in three winning categories at the prestigious European Carton Excellence Awards, including the most prestigious “Carton of the Year”.

On September 21, 2017, the 21st edition of the European Carton Excellence Award, Europe’s most renowned award for carton packaging, was held and BillerudKorsnäs and their converter and brand owner partners went home with three prestigious awards.

“It’s a great honor to be part of and being able to help our customers, both converters and brand owners, with realizing all their great visions, design and environmental packaging ideas. At BillerudKorsnäs we have developed a series of materials creating no need for compromises. Our cartonboard is made from primary fibers, making it so strong that the packaging weight can be reduced without compromising performance, making it possible for both beautiful, functional and environmental packages.” says Magnus Levinsson, Business Segment Director Cartonboard at BillerudKorsnäs.

Together with Domenis 1898 SRL and Lucaprint, BillerudKorsnäs won the most reputable award “Carton of the Year” with the entry Geometrie Cividât. The classic gin is elegantly presented in a diagonally cut carton, where the round bottle is perfectly secured inside the functional and attractive design, making it stand out and at the same time enhance the sophisticated quality of the product. The superior quality and printability of BillerudKorsnäs cartonboard made sure that the cartons designer, Ufficio Tecnico Lucaprint and Giulia Toscanelli, could realize their vision which in the end resulted in being crowned the best carton of the year.

BillerudKorsnäs also helped liquorish manufacturer LIQ and producer VG Kvadra Pak JSC to win best packaging in the “Confectionary” category with their prgifemium packaging “LIQ gift set”. The t set consists of one large gift box which holds four small cube boxes, all made from BillerudKorsnäs cartonboard. The small boxes have a double layer of material produced from eco-friendly cartonboard material, which helps to achieve a more natural and matte look and at the same time allows for excellent printing quality and what the jury named “an exceptional experience”.

First place in the “Drinks” category went to the French Jolival together with VG Angoulème who designed and produced the entry ‘Eco-Fontaine Jolival’, a transportable five-litre water fountain that requires no maintenance or electricity. Made of BillerudKorsnäs cartonboard the carton can be recycled or refilled and therefore has multiple lifecycles, an extremely eco-friendly concept. The use of cartonboard for both cups and dispenser also helps to limit the use of plastics, doubling the positive environmental, which the jury called “ideal”.

Description, jury's comments and pictures are available at:

Carton of the Year/Geometrie Cividât: http://www.procarton.com/awards/carton-excellence- award/2017/categories/carton-of-the-year/

Winner Confectionary category/VG Kvadra Pak JSC: http://www.procarton.com/awards/carton- excellence-award/2017/categories/confectionery/

Winner Drinks category/ VG Angoulème http://www.procarton.com/awards/carton-excellence- award/2017/categories/drinks/

BillerudKorsnäs provides packaging materials and solutions that challenge conventional packaging for a sustainable future. We are a world-leading provider of primary fibre based packaging materials and have customers in over 100 countries. The company has 8 production sites in Sweden, Finland and the UK and about 4300 employees in over 13 countries. BillerudKorsnäs has an annual turnover of about SEK 22 billion and is listed on Nasdaq Stockholm. www.billerudkorsnas.com

During the night between September 5th and 6th, there was a fire in one of the buildings at BillerudKorsnäs’ production unit in Karlsborg. The production was stopped as a consequence of the fire but is now back to full speed after a successful work to make the unit ready for production. BillerudKorsnäs estimates that the impact from the fire on Q3 results will be approximately SEK 35 million.  

"Our teams and suppliers have made good efforts to overcome the consequences of the fire and we are glad that we can inform our customers of this quick start-up", says Per Lindberg, President and CEO of BillerudKorsnäs.

The production unit in Karlsborg manufactures sack and kraft paper as well as market pulp for the Packaging Paper business area and has a production capacity of approximately 300,000 tonnes per year.

BillerudKorsnäs provides packaging materials and solutions that challenge conventional packaging for a sustainable future. We are a world-leading provider of primary fibre based packaging materials and have customers in over 100 countries. The company has 8 production sites in Sweden, Finland and the UK and about 4 300 employees in over 13 countries. BillerudKorsnäs has an annual turnover of about SEK 22 billion and is listed on Nasdaq Stockholm. www.billerudkorsnas.com

During the night between September 5th and 6th, there was a fire in one of the buildings at BillerudKorsnäs’ production unit in Karlsborg and the production has been stopped since then. After analysing the impact of the fire, BillerudKorsnäs now expects Karlsborg to be back to full production during the week starting with Monday September 18th.

"The most important thing is that no person has been injured in the fire. We have now assessed the impact of the fire and the work with making the unit ready for start of production is ongoing at high intensity. We expect full production to be reached during next week, i.e. the week starting with Monday September 18th. As it is a complex start-up after this type of event, there is some uncertainty about the exact timing", says Per Lindberg, President and CEO of BillerudKorsnäs.

The fire started as a result of a malfunctioning security valve leaking oxygen leading to ignition.

The production unit in Karlsborg manufactures sack and kraft paper as well as market pulp for the Packaging Paper business area and has a production capacity of approximately 300,000 tonnes per year.

BillerudKorsnäs provides packaging materials and solutions that challenge conventional packaging for a sustainable future. We are a world-leading provider of primary fibre based packaging materials and have customers in over 100 countries. The company has 8 production sites in Sweden, Finland and the UK and about 4 300 employees in over 13 countries. BillerudKorsnäs has an annual turnover of about SEK 22 billion and is listed on Nasdaq Stockholm. www.billerudkorsnas.com

As the only European company, BillerudKorsnäs last year was named sustainability leader in the category Containers & Packaging, and included in the globally recognized Dow Jones Sustainability Index. In this year’s assessment, BillerudKorsnäs advances from belonging to the top 20 percent in Europe, to the 10 percent most sustainable companies in the world.

Dow Jones Sustainability Europe Index covers the leading 20 percent of the largest European companies in terms of sustainability. Dow Jones World Index includes equivalent leading 10 percent of the companies worldwide. The fact that BillerudKorsnäs now is included in the World Index and once again named sustainability leader in it’s category is particular due to its performance within risk and crisis management, climate strategy and labor practice indicators.

"Being included among the most sustainable companies in the world is a great honour to us. Contributing to sustainable development is and will continue to be the starting point for our long-term strategy of profitable growth. Sustainability is therefore an integral part of everything we do. In a broader context, that means to always strive to take sustainability work a little further, to challenge conventional packaging solutions and working methods, and thereby positively contribute to a globally sustainable future", says Per Lindberg, President and CEO of BillerudKorsnäs.

BillerudKorsnäs sustainability work focuses on three areas: increasing customer value, responsibility throughout the value chain and contributing to a sustainable and bio-based society. In practice, that means to strengthen the customers sustainability work and competitiveness by developing smart packaging solutions based on renewable materials; to speed up the transition towards a sustainable and bio-based society by combating climate change throughout the entire value chain locally and globally; as well as to promote responsibility from raw material supply and production to recycling and provide engaging workplaces where safety, diversity and human rights are a priority.

About Dow Jones Sustainability Index
Dow Jones Sustainability Index (DJSI), launched in September 1999, is the first global index on how companies perform within economically relevant environmental, social and economic governance factors (ESG, Environmental, Social and Corporate Governance). Annually, 3,900 of the world's largest companies from developed and emerging markets are analyzed by RobecoSAM in cooperation with Dow Jones. www.sustainability-indices.com 

production shutdown while property damage is being investigated

As reported in the media, during the night between September 5 and 6th, there was a fire in one of the buildings at BillerudKorsnäs’ production unit in Karlsborg. The fire started late in the evening on September 5th in and was isolated to one building. . The fire has been extinguished. The cause of the fire has not yet been determined. The production in Karlsborg has been stopped while the damage is being investigated.

"We can confirm that we have had a fire in Karlsborg during the night. The most important thing is that no person has been injured in the fire. Production has been stopped. We will know how long the production will be stopped when the extent of the damage has been determined. We have begun an investigation and will return with additional information when we know more about the consequences and when production can be restarted, "says Per Lindberg, President and CEO BillerudKorsnäs.

The production unit in Karlsborg manufactures sack and kraft paper as well as market pulp for the Packaging Paper business area and has a production capacity of approximately 300,000 tonnes per year.

BillerudKorsnäs provides packaging materials and solutions that challenge conventional packaging for a sustainable future. We are a world-leading provider of primary fibre based packaging materials and have customers in over 100 countries. The company has 8 production sites in Sweden, Finland and the UK and about 4 300 employees in over 13 countries. BillerudKorsnäs has an annual turnover of about SEK 22 billion and is listed on Nasdaq Stockholm. www.billerudkorsnas.com

CEO Per Lindberg comments on the development during Q2 2017:

“The market for sustainable packaging materials and solutions remains very encouraging. We delivered a stable result in the second quarter, despite the pressure from costs of external factors and the major disruption at Gruvön, which was communicated in May.

Looking ahead, we see that the path we have chosen is the right one. Markets are performing strongly over the short term, and in the long term the trend points to companies being ambitious in their sustainability efforts both in their business operations and their products. The prospects for growth are good.”    

THE RESULT

We delivered solid operating profit of SEK 489 million. Production was relatively stable and we had planned maintenance shutdowns at three of our production units over the quarter, which cost SEK 25 million more than we had estimated. In addition, we had SEK 25 million in costs for the shutdown of the pulp line for the fluting machine at Gruvön, which we communicated separately, as well as additional costs related to Rockhammar of approximately SEK 30 million. Our results were also negatively affected by increased costs of deliveries due to the strike at the Port of Gothenburg.

The business areas showed stable performance over the quarter on a strong market and we see some positive development in local prices. Consumer Board is showing volume growth of around 6% compared with the first half of last year.

MARKET OUTLOOK

The strong performance in the market by all business areas is expected to continue over the next quarter. The outlook is good and there are opportunities for further price increases, particularly in the Packaging Paper and Corrugated Solutions business areas.

Primary fibre-based material with high sustainability performance is our core business, but alongside this, our solutions-based offerings are growing rapidly. This is being driven by both demand for a comprehensive offering in which the material is a key component, and by other types of solutions and packaging services. We are seeing a trend of packaging gaining an increasingly important role in many brand owners’ efforts to make their products more competitive. The sustainability performance of packaging is particularly important. This continues to give us great confidence in our products and our development.

STRATEGY

We are continually reviewing and updating our growth strategy, but our chosen approach remains in place and we are firm in our belief in our clear focus on the effectiveness, sustainability and innovation of both new materials and new solutions and offerings. Achieving long-term growth requires resources and investments, along with a balance between a strong proactive approach and a focus on the right initiatives.

Packaging generates significant value for virtually all product value chains, and BillerudKorsnäs aims to shift its position forward in these chains. These efforts have created opportunities to develop new end-to-end solutions together with other companies such as our cooperation with Bosch on Axello Zap. This solution, which has only been in place for a year, is an example of where we see growing interest in end-to-end solutions with the potential to replace conventional packaging with more sustainable options. Also, it recently won a prize at Packaging Europe’s Sustainability Awards in the Bio-based Packaging category.

BillerudKorsnäs provides packaging materials and solutions that challenge conventional packaging for a sustainable future. We are a world-leading provider of primary fibre based packaging materials and have customers in over 100 countries. The company has 8 production sites in Sweden, Finland and the UK and about 4 300 employees in over 13 countries. BillerudKorsnäs has an annual turnover of about SEK 22 billion and is listed on Nasdaq Stockholm. www.billerudkorsnas.com

BillerudKorsnäs and Uppsala university has initiated a multi-annual collaboration to develop paper-based electrode materials. Based on achievements at Uppsala university in combination with BillerudKorsnäs competence in industrial production and packaging development, the future's sustainable fiber-based packaging will be explored.

The co-operation, which lasts three years, has been agreed between BillerudKorsnäs and Uppsala university Holding and aims to further develop research knowledge from Uppsala university to create energy storage in fiber structures by coating cellulosic fibers with electrically conductive polymers.

Behind the interdisciplinary research stands professors Maria Strömme and Albert Mihranyan at the department of nanotechnology and functional materials, as well as professor Leif Nyholm at the department of Inorganic Chemistry at Ångström Laboratory,

Techniques for energy storage in fiber structures could enable storage of electrical energy in a paper or cardboard sheet - a paper battery simply expressed!

"Future packaging solution will offer consumers more features than today. With electrical energy stored in the paper itself, new opportunities are being opened to create these new features – the prerequisites for this we want to explore in collaboration with Uppsala university," says Magnus Wikström, CTO of BillerudKorsnäs.

As communicated earlier BillerudKorsnäs experienced a major breakdown in the digester in the semi-chemical pulp production line in Gruvön. The problem has now been resolved. The pulp line and the fluting machine PM6 is back in production.

The impact on EBITDA for the breakdown is estimated to approximately SEK 25 million after compensation from insurance.

“The impact of the breakdown could be limited thanks to a very efficient work in the mill, and we could start up production relatively quickly. Now we have to limit the indirect damage in the form of missing deliveries and customer relations,” says Per Lindberg, CEO of BillerudKorsnäs.

Related article : BillerudKorsnäs production of semi-chemical pulp supplying PM6 in Gruvön experience breakdown

BillerudKorsnäs provides packaging materials and solutions that challenge conventional packaging for a sustainable future. We are a world-leading provider of primary fibre based packaging materials and have customers in over 100 countries. The company has 8 production sites in Sweden, Finland and the UK and about 4 300 employees in over 13 countries. BillerudKorsnäs has an annual turnover of about SEK 22 billion and is listed on Nasdaq Stockholm. www.billerudkorsnas.com

BillerudKorsnäs experienced a major breakdown in the digester in the semi-chemical pulp production line in Gruvön. The pulp line supplies the fluting machine PM6 with pulp and consequently no fluting from PM6 can currently be produced. The breakdown of the pulp line does not have an impact on the integrated chemical pulp mill, neither does it impact the production of kraft paper, liner or liquid packaging board at the mill.  

“At this point in time it is not possible to estimate the financial damage and consequences on customer deliveries, but it will have a significant impact on the current quarter financials. We will return with additional information when we know what the impact will be,” says Per Lindberg, CEO of BillerudKorsnäs.

BillerudKorsnäs provides packaging materials and solutions that challenge conventional packaging for a sustainable future. We are a world-leading provider of primary fibre based packaging materials and have customers in over 100 countries. The company has 8 production sites in Sweden, Finland and the UK and about 4 300 employees in over 13 countries. BillerudKorsnäs has an annual turnover of about SEK 22 billion and is listed on Nasdaq Stockholm. www.billerudkorsnas.com

CEO Per Lindberg comments on the development during Q1 2017:
“The first quarter of 2017 saw growth on the back of high demand in the markets across all business areas. Sales are showing better than expected growth, and our production is in fact at an all-time high for a single quarter. However, our operating profit during the quarter suffered from spillover effects from 2016, and we have as a consequence undertaken significant measures to address both our start-up performance as well as quality performance.

Two of the key elements in our growth strategy and production capacity are our major ongoing investments in Skärblacka and Gruvön. We are glad to see that the start-up of these projects has been successful and that they are well under way. Together with new solution sales initiatives we have laid a strong foundation for continued growth.”

THE RESULT
Our operating profit SEK 550 million falls short of our expectations. This is due to the ramp up of Rockhammar after the rebuild in 2016 and quality costs emanating from production disturbances during the second half of 2016. Even if the situation has improved and stabilized in Rockhammar, we may experience some minor costs also in the upcoming quarter. However, looking at the current market, we see an overall positive development across the board and a solid performance in terms of sales growth, 5% during the first quarter compared to the same quarter last year. Within Consumer Board we even exceeded our expectations during the beginning of the year, driven by strong sales to all major liquid packaging board customers. During the quarter we were subject to an unexpected inspection under EU competition rules as part of a larger investigation of the market for bleached and unbleached kraft papers. We have no indications of the outcome from the inspection.

MARKET OUTLOOK
All of our business areas are currently showing a favourable development, partly due to underlying strong demand but also some seasonal improvement in Packaging Paper. We believe this will continue also in the second quarter and we now need to meet this strong demand with high production volume and quality.
The growing demand for sustainable packaging does not only drive demand for sustainable materials. We can also detect an increasing need for holistic packaging solutions throughout the whole value chain of the packaged product, especially in developing markets. Such solutions are necessary to enable a shift toward packaging that help create better packaging performance, especially in terms of sustainability. We are already in a position where we can offer such solutions – Managed Packaging within Corrugated Solutions, Sack Sales and system sales such as Axello Zap within Packaging Paper to name a few. Today these new solutions offerings still constitute a small part of our total business but they are growing more rapidly than material sales and we expect that development to continue and accelerate.

STRATEGY
Our target is to deliver profitable growth through offering both materials and solutions. Sustainability is becoming an increasingly integrated part of our core offer along with cost, protective and appearance performance criteria. It is often an entry ticket to new business and a result of our efforts to challenge customers to choose more sustainable alternatives, BillerudKorsnäs alternatives. One clear example of this is the launch in March of a Sack Sales partnership in Malaysia to serve the market throughout South East Asia. We can through delivering a complete packaging solution based on our material, but by sourcing the converting, provide the market with a product that replaces less sustainable solutions made of plastic. Our solution provides a better carbon footprint but also a much better working environment for the end user which for instance can be cement. Such examples of new sustainable solutions and business models in combination with the growth in production of sustainable materials generated by the large investments in our production structure show that we have the ability to deliver on our strategy for profitable growth.

BillerudKorsnäs provides packaging materials and solutions that challenge conventional packaging for a sustainable future. We are a world-leading provider of primary fibre based packaging materials and have customers in over 100 countries. The company has 8 production sites in Sweden, Finland and the UK and about 4 300 employees in over 13 countries. BillerudKorsnäs has an annual turnover of about SEK 22 billion and is listed on Nasdaq Stockholm. www.billerudkorsnas.com