Stora Enso Further Expands its Plantations in Guangxi

Helsinki, Finland, 25 September 2006 -- Stora Enso today signed a contract with the city of Beihai in Guangxi province, China, to secure fiber resources. Under the contract, from now through 2008, Beihai city will provide Stora Enso with a total of 30,813 hectares of plantation and land through purchasing existing plantations and establishing new plantations on forestland.

Stora Enso currently has about 60,000 hectares of hardwood industrial plantations and land usage rights in southern Guangxi. The aim is to create a sustainably managed fiber base of 160,000 hectares of plantation land by 2010 to support establishment of an integrated pulp and paper mill in Guangxi in the long term.

"The plantations and land that Beihai city will provide for Stora Enso form an integral part of the whole fiber base portfolio that will be of the utmost importance to successful forest, pulp, and paper integration in Guangxi," said Elisabet Salander Björklund, senior executive vice president, Stora Enso Forest Products. "We are very pleased with the progress we are making with the support of our partners."

To ensure sustainable development of the plantations, Stora Enso invited the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) to carry out an Environmental and Social Impact Assessment (ESIA) of the Guangxi plantations in 2005 and 2006. The assessment found that there are no major environmental or social issues that could affect Stora Enso's plantation project in Guangxi.