Metsä Board Sustainability Review 2023

This is Metsä Board

Forerunner in premium lightweight paperboards

On the road to fossil free production and regenerative forestry

employees • in folding boxboards and white kraftliners in Europe • in coated white kraftliners in the world No 1 2,300 Sales in 2023 1.9 EUR bn. The Metsä Board portfolio offers solutions for demanding packaging end uses, such as food and beverages, food service, consumer electronics, beautycare, healthcare and graphic applications. As part of Metsä Group, a Finnish forest industry group, we benefit from a unique value chain from pure Northern European wood fibre to high-quality end products. We help our customers reduce their carbon footprint through resource-efficient materials and packaging solutions that are easy to recycle and promote the circular economy. Metsä Board is a leading European producer of premium lightweight paperboards . Our product range covers lightweight folding boxboards, food service boards and white kraftliners. Used in consumer and retail packaging, our paperboards are made from fully traceable fresh wood fibre coming from responsibly managed forests that are either certified or meet the criteria of controlled origin.

The resources on our planet are finite. As urbanisation and population growth continue to boost the need for packaging, we all need to think about how to make things smarter and in line with the circular economy. Mitigating climate change, promoting biodiversity, using resources efficiently, and developing a responsible corporate culture and supply chain are at the core of our sustainability efforts. To achieve results that make a difference, sustainability targets must be ambitious. At Metsä Board, we aim to achieve fossil free production and products by the end of 2030. Currently, 90% of the energy and 99% of the raw materials used at our mills are fossil free. To save valuable resources, we continuously invest in the most efficient production processes. We have detailed roadmaps for the climate and water measures we’re taking to achieve our 2030 sustainability targets. These roadmaps describe the completed and planned investments, and their impact on reducing our fossil-based CO 2 emissions and process water use. Resource efficiency is at the core of our product development work. Based on lifecycle assessments, our paperboards have a lower carbon footprint compared to many corresponding packaging materials. This also helps our customers to reduce their carbon footprint.

When talking about sustainability, just aiming at minimising the negative impacts on the environment is not enough. We need to take things further and aim higher. To take our efforts to the next level, the entire Metsä Group adopted regenerative forestry principles in spring 2023. The goal is to ensure forests are transferred from one generation to the next in a vibrant, diverse and climate-resilient condition, and to verify positive impacts on forest biodiversity by 2030 at the latest. In promoting social responsibility, our core areas of focus are ethical corporate culture, employee wellbeing and safety at work. We advance diversity, equality and inclusion with the Metsä for all vision, and measure our progress through the targets set. For example, we’ve adopted anonymous recruitment as our main recruitment method, in order to offer all job applicants equal opportunities. Transparency is the cornerstone of all sustainability work. That is why we’ve prepared this Sustainability Review. It covers the most relevant information on environmental, social, and governance issues and summarises our key sustainability topics and their progress in 2023. We also provide a comprehensive Sustainability Statement as part of the Report of the Board of Directors 2023 as preparation for the upcoming Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive. These reports are available for anyone interested in under- standing our journey and goals towards a sustainable future. I hope they will provide you with useful and relevant information and show that we are on the common road towards a positive change.

We work to mitigate climate change

By the end of 2030 our mills will have zero fossil-based CO 2 emissions and our products will be made entirely from fossil free materials.

Annual paperboard production capacity 2.3 Mt

Our operations

8 100

Our highly efficient production units in Finland and Sweden are located close to the forests that are the source of our most impor- tant raw material: high-quality wood fibres.

Annual production capacity of high-yield (BCTMP) and chemical pulp 1.7 Mt

We deliver to approximately 100 countries on all continents.

Mika Joukio CEO

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METSÄ BOARD SUSTAINABILITY REVIEW 2023

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