Building with wood

Von Herbert Perus, Sustainability Office bei der Raiffeisen KAG

In our meeting with Stora Enso, we were able to pose many questions and also discuss the company’s various business areas in depth. Among other things, we were interested in the growth in the field of renewable materials in the construction industry. The company had the following answer:

“Our journey started about 15 years ago. Back then, we were strongly concentrated on the market for single-family homes in the DACH region. The business grew steadily and nowadays we deliver CLT (Cross Laminated Timber) globally from our four CLT plants. We also offer LVL (Laminated Veneer Lumber). We supply various different customer segments (ranging from installers and general contractors to property developers) and a broad spectrum of building types, from single-family homes and multi-story residential buildings to schools, offices, and business properties. The long-term prospects look very promising, as regulatory conditions and other megatrends, such as environmental awareness, support the underlying growth potentials. Moreover, compared to buildings that are erected with fossil-based materials, wood creates a healthier living environment for people, and it is a flexible material, both in terms of its use in construction and as a material in its own right, for example for earthquake-prone areas. Wood products store CO2 over their entire lifetime, and depending on the type of product, i.e. the building, this can be very long. Building with wood using our solutions is faster than with other materials and also saves labour, as the construction occurs with components.”

Many people wonder about the durability and stability of wood construction.

Stora Enso responded to our question as follows: “We think that one can rightly say that many of the oldest buildings in the developed world are built out of wood. What does that mean? It does not mean that wood is a durable solution for every application. It means that the lifespan of wood is almost unlimited in the case of good planning, construction, and maintenance. Materials like steel and concrete are often thought to be more durable than wood, but in turn they too are not durable in the case of poor planning, construction, and maintenance. Right now, we are building our new headquarters in Helsinki, which should guarantee a lifespan of 100 years, and we think that it will last even longer.”

Stora Enso estimates that the construction timber segment accounts for roughly 20% of the total turnover in wood products, and the goal is to increase this ratio to over 40% in a few years. At present, Stora Enso says that it is building around 2,000 to 2,500 projects annually. Examples are the University of Singapore and a partial new construction of the Technical Museum in Stockholm, which will open in December. In the last 15 years, almost 20,000 projects have been implemented, including some award-winning structures using the sustainable materials produced by Stora Enso.

Read also:
Round table on sustainability in planning and building

Company history of Stora Enso

One has to look back deep into the annals of European economic history, all the way to the 13th century, to reach the beginning of the fascinating story of Stora Enso. The cornerstone of the company’s history was laid when the Swedish bishop Peter acquired a concession to mine copper ore in the year 1288. According to many commentators, this means that the Stora Enso Group is the oldest company in existence today. For 700 years, copper mining was the core business of the company called Stora in the Swedish town of Falun. In the 17th century, it held a two-thirds share of the global market. In 1997, one year before the fusion with Enso, Stora had more than 20,000 employees, Group turnover of almost 45 billion Swedish krona, and was the owner of 2.3 million hectares of forest (equivalent to about one third of the area of Austria) in Sweden, Canada, Portugal, and Brazil.

The roots of Enso in Finland reach back to 1872, when the sawmill W. Gutzeit & Co was founded, which was later renamed to Enso-Gutzeit after its home industrial town in 1924 and finally to just Enso.

In October 1998, three companies – Stora, Enso, and Schweighofer, an Austrian firm that had developed into one of Europe’s largest sawmills and lumber companies after its foundation in 1642 – merged together to form Stora Enso, one of the world’s biggest wood processing and paper groups. This status was also achieved with the acquisition of many other companies, such as the North American paper group Consolidated Papers for EUR 4.9 billion in 2000. After this, Stora Enso continued to grow, in particular thanks to expansion in Latin America and Asia. The company started focusing more and more on digital publishing, by expanding its printing and publishing activities to Internet and mobile telephone platforms. Additionally, it has increasingly been pursuing a business model based on the circular economy.

The 2010s saw the development of products using biomass as a base material and support for the general issue of sustainability started in the Group. Since then, this commitment has been strengthened year after year, as clearly demonstrated in the statements made by CEO Hans Sohlström.

At present, Stora Enso has operations in over 30 countries, with more than 26,000 employees. It is one of the world’s leading companies in the field of sustainable resources and is constantly developing innovative solution for the wood- and paper-based products of the present and the future. The company’s vision is clear: to reach a fossil-free future and have a positive impact on the environment. This stands to benefit economic regions and their societies around the world.

Stora Enso is a very old but still highly innovative company, which we are happy to accompany as a constructive, sustainable investor in the years to come. On this journey, we will have more and more to report on its progress on the path of sustainability.