Due to the increase of costs for raw materials, especially for pulp, and for chemicals and logistics, Papierfabrik Koehler will raise its prices for reacto® carbonless paper in Latin America. The increase will be 8 – 12% and will be effective for deliveries ex mill from Mai 1st, 2018 onwards.

Building Strong Relationships reviews 2021 and looks at both our achievements and our opportunities to do better. In particular, it highlights the work we did in building relationships with the Indigenous communities in whose traditional territories we operate and our corporate giving campaign which had a greatly increased budget in 2021. The report also looks at our environmental and economic impacts nationally and on a mill-by-mill basis. From an environmental standpoint, 85% of our total energy use was renewable in 2021 and we have continued to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions—now down by 66% since 1990. From an economic perspective, the total economic activity created by Paper Excellence Canada operations was $4.8 billion. “Paper Excellence Canada’s spent this last year putting our words into action and I’m proud of what we have achieved,” said Graham Kissack, Vice President, Environment, Health & Safety and Corporate Communications. “Our vision is to be a profitable, sustainable, and globally competitive fibre products provider that is environmentally and economically beneficial to all stakeholders and this year’s achievements have supported us in that aim.”

At our site in Schwedt/Oder, we are building a new, innovative straw fibre production plant together with our partner OutNature, a brand of PreZero (Schwarz Group). This marks an important milestone for sustainable paper production and opens up exciting prospects for the future. Straw offers a number of advantages as a raw material for fibre production. As a by-product of agricultural grain processing, it does not require any additional cultivation areas. Furthermore, cultivation in Germany contributes to short transport routes, which reduces emissions. Straw fibres make it possible to dispense with fresh wood fibres and, thanks to their excellent strength properties, contribute to the production of comparable paper qualities. LEIPA plans to use straw fibres in combination with waste paper at its Schwedt/Oder site. We currently process over one million tonnes of waste paper per year in Schwedt to produce various types of paper for packaging and graphic applications. The core of the straw fibre production plant consists of a BioTrac plant from Valmet. Test results show that the strength properties of straw fibres significantly exceed those of waste paper, which is an exciting development.