FINLAND (News release) -- Performa Light CarbonZero™ by Stora Enso is the first carbon neutral cartonboard offer in the market. It helps Stora Enso's customers to have a smaller climate impact.

Performa Light CarbonZero is a carbon neutral, renewable and recyclable cartonboard offering that helps Stora Enso's customers to achieve carbon-related sustainability targets and show concrete and measurable actions on climate change through their packaging.

Performa Light CarbonZero is produced at Stora Enso's Fors site in Sweden, which is fossil carbon emission-free in its electricity and steam production and from the beginning of 2022 also in internal logistics. This is a result of continuous work and investments in improving the operations. The production is therefore already very low on greenhouse gas emissions. To make Performa Light CarbonZero carbon neutral, the currently unavoidable emissions originating from raw material production are compensated with a well-established offsetting service provided by external partner South Pole.

"Since sustainability is more and more a deciding factor in consumer purchases, we expect the demand for carbon neutral products to grow in the future. Carbon neutral Performa Light CarbonZero will help our customers to have a smaller climate impact and to differentiate on the market through their packaging" says Dmitry Panfilov, VP, Head of Business Line FBB and SBS.

Sustainability is at the core of Stora Enso, which culminates in the goal to become 100% circular, net biodiversity positive and net carbon positive by 2050. Stora Enso is already ambitiously reducing greenhouse gas emissions from its operations and value chain, and the share of fossil fuels in the group's overall energy consumption is low. This has made the move towards offering carbon neutral material possible.

"Our priority is always to reduce fossil emissions in our operations and value chain as much as we can, and our goal is to eventually offer carbon neutral products without offsetting. However, some emissions are still currently unavoidable, which is why we use carbon offsetting to be able to offer carbon neutral packaging material already now," says Kristiina Veitola, VP, Sustainability, Packaging Materials division.

In addition to carbon neutrality, Performa Light CarbonZero is ideal for folding cartons for chocolate and confectionery, cosmetics and beauty care, healthcare and other premium packaging. The superior quality of Performa Light makes it attractive for premium brands. It has an exceptional visual appearance and thanks to FiberLight Tec™ by Stora Enso, a patented fiber treatment technology, the product is lightweight without compromising on strength.