Ecolab Inc. has been named to the Dow Jones Sustainability (DJSI) World Index, a list of the world's leading sustainability companies, and to the DJSI North America Index. The DJSI World Index captures the top 10 percent of the world's 2,500 largest companies based on economic, environmental and social criteria. The North America Index captures the top 20 percent of the 600 largest companies in the United States and Canada.

"We are pleased to see this recognition of our continuing efforts to make the world cleaner, safer and healthier while protecting people and vital resources," said Douglas M. Baker, Jr., Ecolab chairman and CEO. "By partnering with our customers at more than one million locations worldwide, we have an impact far beyond our own operations."

Details of Ecolab's sustainability initiatives with customers and within its own operations can be found in the company's 2011 Sustainability Report at www.ecolab.com/csr.

Launched in 1999, the Dow Jones Sustainability Indexes track the financial performance of the leading sustainability-driven companies worldwide. The indexes provide asset managers with reliable and objective benchmarks to manage sustainability portfolios.

The Board of Directors of Ahlstrom Corporation and Munksjö Corporation have on September 11, 2012 signed two demerger plans, according to which all the assets and liabilities contained in the Ahlstrom Group that belong to the Ahlstrom Group's Label and Processing business in Europe and Brazil will be transferred to Munksjö Corporation, a new company established in Finland for these purposes, through two separate partial demergers. The signing of these demerger plans forms a step in the execution of the transaction between Ahlstrom and EQT concerning the combination of Ahlstrom's Label and Processing business and Munksjö AB that was announced on  August  28, 2012.

The complete demerger plans are attached to this Stock Exchange Release and they contain information, inter alia, on the demerger consideration to Ahlstrom's shareholders, the planned time for execution of the demergers, the division of the demerging company's assets and liabilities to the recipient company and the conditions for the execution of the demergers.

The partial demergers require the approval of the Extraordinary Shareholders' Meeting of Ahlstrom. Ahlstrom will publish a separate invitation to the Extraordinary Shareholders' Meeting to be held in November 2012.

Ecolab Inc. has been named to Forbes magazine's list of "The World's Most Innovative Companies" for the second consecutive year. Ecolab ranks 31st out of 100 companies on the global list that appeared in the Sept. 5 issue of Forbes.

"Our purpose to make the world cleaner, safer and healthier drives our commitment to innovation," said Douglas M. Baker Jr., Ecolab chairman and CEO. "Ecolab's innovation has spanned eight decades, and we are committed to carrying on this tradition with future generations of customer solutions."

Ecolab's more than 1,300 scientists, including 500 Ph.D.s, work in a network of 15 facilities located around the world. These researchers develop solutions for a variety of industries including foodservice, retail, hospitality, healthcare, buildings and facilities, commercial laundries, food and beverage processing, pulp and paper, mining and mineral processing, and oil and gas.

Over the past five years, Ecolab has invested $750 million in research, development and engineering to develop solutions for these industries and currently holds more than 5,300 patents globally. Innovations are developed using a positive impact approach that leverages chemistry, equipment, packaging, dispensing and expertise to produce superior results while improving environmental benefits and cost savings.

"Our positive impact approach is essential to our innovation process," said Dr. Larry Berger, Ecolab chief technical officer and executive vice president, Research, Development & Engineering. "With this approach, we deliver effective, sustainable solutions that help our customers optimize their operations while minimizing environmental impact."

According to Forbes, the "innovation premium" used to rank the companies is a measure of how much investors have bid up the stock price of a company above the value of its existing business based on expectations of future innovative results in new products, services and markets. Additionally, members of the list must have $10 billion in market capitalization, spend at least 2.5 percent of revenue on R&D and have seven years of public data.

SCA has once again been included in the Dow Jones Sustainability Europe Index, which is one the world’s most prestigious sustainability indexes.

 “We are pleased that our sustainability work is being recognized in this way. We are proud to have been included in the index five times during the last eight years. Our sustainability work is an essential part of our strategy for growth and value creation for our business and also for people and nature,” says Kersti Strandqvist, SVP Corporate Sustainability at SCA.

AkzoNobel has cemented its position as a global sustainability leader after being ranked in first place in the Chemicals supersector on the prestigious Dow Jones Sustainability World Indexes (DJSI)

Published today, the latest listing reveals that AkzoNobel achieved a total score of 93, improving on last year’s second place. The company has been ranked in the top three since 2007 (when AkzoNobel last topped the list).

"Our first place ranking and our consistent performance over the last years are clear evidence of how sustainability has been successfully integrated into our global operations," said Andre Veneman, Sustainability Director, who also acknowledged the contribution made by the company's employees around the world. "For us, business is sustainability and sustainability is business."

Regarded as one of the world's foremost sustainability indices, the DJSI World Index benchmarks the sustainability performance of leading companies based on environmental, social and economic performance, including forward-looking indicators.

BASF was again included in the global Dow Jones Sustainability Index (DJSI World). The company has been recognized for its sustainability engagement in areas such as climate strategy, risk and crisis management as well as human capital development. The DJSI World is one of the most recognized sustainability indices and represents the top 10 percent of the largest 2,500 companies in each industry included in the Dow Jones Global Index.

BASF share is included in the DJSI World for the twelfth consecutive year. The listed companies have to demonstrate continuous improvement every year with regards to sustainability and are assessed by analysts from Sustainable Asset Management Group (SAM).

Carbon Disclosure Leadership Index and Carbon Performance Leadership Index

According to the international investor group Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP), BASF is among the ten leading companies in the world in climate protection. In the current ranking, the Carbon Disclosure Leadership Index (CDLI) listed BASF again with an outstanding place for the eighth time and the company has been included in the Carbon Performance Leadership Index (CPLI) for the third time and thus continuously since establishment of this index.

CDP represents 655 institutional investors holding $78 trillion in assets under management. Investors use CDP indices as assessment tools.

The CDLI contains 51 companies that disclose their data in a particularly transparent and comprehensive manner. As in previous years, BASF is the top scorer in the Materials sector.

The CPLI lists 33 companies based on their exemplary performance in climate protection activities – for example their climate strategy, their stakeholder communication or their management system. At the beginning of 2012, BASF established a new, ambitious climate protection goal: By 2020 the company wants to reduce the global greenhouse gas emissions per metric ton of sales product by 40 % compared to 2002.

Sustainability is integral to BASF’s strategy “We create chemistry“ and a main growth driver. Additional information on sustainability at BASF is available on the Internet at www.basf.com/sustainability.

UPM’s Biofore vision and consistent work on corporate responsibility has gained recognition: UPM has been listed as the only forestry and paper company worldwide in the Dow Jones Sustainability Indexes. The company has been selected both as a Supersector Leader in Basic Resources sector and Forestry & Paper Sector Leader for 2012-2013 in the Dow Jones Sustainability Index (DJSI). UPM was chosen as an index component for both to the European and World Sustainability Index for 2012-2013.

The DJSI tracks the stock performance of the world's leading companies in terms of economic, environmental and social criteria. The DJSI follow a best-in-class approach, including companies across all industries that outperform their peers in numerous sustainability metrics.

Billerud, Swedish manufacturer of strong primary fibre-based packaging material, recently acquired two paper machines in Finland from UPM. Tieto helps Billerud to dismount the production systems from UPM and later integrate them into Billerud with Tieto Integrated Paper Solution TIPS. It will also modify the parts that will be shared between the two companies.

After the approval of EU authorities at the beginning of June, Billerud now needs to take up the running of the paper machines quickly in just four months. In addition, the mills need to function totally in the Billerud business set up.

Billerud already uses TIPS for their production planning and the integration will simplify the business processes with a tight integration to Billerud's sales system. The new TIPS installation will also improve the transparency and traceability of the business and give better utilization of the warehouses in the planning process.

"We wanted to run this critical project with the minimum risk. We need to integrate the former UPM paper machines into our own business fast and there is no time for errors. Therefore we needed a partner who understands the business of both companies. We also need a manufacturing execution system with extensive functionality, and Tieto and TIPS can well live up to the challenge," tells Marcus Brånfelt, CIO, Billerud.

"The speed of the implementation makes this a challenging project but using the standard pulp, paper and board industry product, we are able to succeed in this. The people working at the mills will be able to continue working with familiar tools," explains Mats Lidström from Tieto.

Tieto Integrated Paper Solution TIPS provides a proven real-time operations management solution by seamlessly linking planning, business operations, and production processes of a forest company. It combines the functionality and the best practices of four previous advanced Sales and MES systems and over 30 years experience and offers management of the whole order-to-cash value chain.