Stora Enso

1/8 share of the Stora Kopparberg mine, dated 16 June 1288.

The oldest preserved share in the Swedish copper mining company Stora Kopparberg ("great copper mountain") in Falun was issued in 1288. It granted the Bishop of Västerås 12.5 per cent ownership, and it is also the oldest known preserved share in any company in the world. The corporate status of the company was further recognized in 1347, when King Magnus IV of Sweden granted it a charter. Some observers consider that these facts make Stora and its successor Stora Enso the oldest existing corporation or limited liability company in the world.[1][9][10]

For some periods during the 17th century, the mine provided two thirds of the world production of copper. In the 18th century, the copper mining gradually decreased in importance, and therefore, in 1731, the company bought its first iron ore mine. By the 1860s, iron ore was economically more important to the company than copper.

Stora Kopparbergs Bergslags AB was incorporated as a modern shareholder company in 1862. Towards the end of the 19th century, it diversified from mining and entered pulp and paper production. In the 1970s, most of the mining and steel mill operations of the company were divested, and the focus changed to forestry-related activities. In 1984, the company name was shortened to Stora AB. The copper mine closed down in 1992.

In 1997, the year before the merger with Enso, Stora had 20,400 employees and a turnover of 44.5 billion SEK. The company owned 2.3 million hectares of forest of which 1.6 million hectares (an area larger than Connecticut) in Sweden and the rest in Canada, Portugal and Brazil. It also produced 7.5 TWh of mostly hydroelectric power.

A 1997 article in Harvard Business Review praised Stora's ability to adapt to changing circumstances over the centuries.[1][10]

In 1998, the company merged with Enso to form Stora Enso.

Headquarters built for Enso-Gutzeit Oy in the port area of Helsinki, designed by Alvar Aalto, 1962

Enso-Gutzeit Oy was founded in the 19th century in Norway as W. Gutzeit & Co. by Wilhelm Gutzeit; a native of Königsberg, he was a step-cousin of the industrialist Benjamin Wegner and had moved to Norway to work as Wegner's secretary. Gutzeit's son Hans Gutzeit moved the company to Finland, where it became the largest forestry company in the country.

Enso-Gutzeit Osakeyhtiö bought A. Ahlström Osakeyhtiö's forest industries at Varkaus in December 1986. In 1995 a decision was made to merge two state owned forest giants together. The merger materialized next year when Enso-Gutzeit Oy and North Finland based Veitsiluoto Oy formed Enso Oyj.

In 1998, the company merged with Stora to form Stora Enso.

After the merger, Stora Enso expanded its operations by acquiring wood products businesses and bought paper merchant businesses in Europe. In 2000 the company bought Consolidated Papers in North America. Stora Enso also slowly expanded its operations in South America, Asia and Russia.

In 2000, Stora Enso acquired the North American pulp and paper manufacturer Consolidated Papers for EUR 4.9 billion.[11] The acquisition has, in hindsight, been noted in the financial press as a massive value destroyer.[12][13] In the same year, Stora Enso and AssiDomän formed a joint company, Billerud AB, to produce packaging paper.

In 2002, Stora Enso started investigating the possibility of establishing plantations and production facilities in Guangxi, China.[14][15] In the same year, the company was the fifth largest pulp and paper manufacturer in terms of revenue, and in 2005, it was the world's largest pulp and paper manufacturer in terms of production capacity.

In recent years the company has gone through heavy restructuring. The North American operations were divested in 2007 to NewPage Corporation. Stora Enso has sold and closed down some of its mills in Finland, Sweden and Germany. The closure of a plant in Kemijärvi in 2008 and subsequent events were subject to significant Finnish media coverage.[16][17][18]

In 2009, Stora Enso entered into a joint venture in Uruguay, called Montes del Plata, with access to 250,000 hectares of woodland and the intention to build a large-capacity mill.[19][20][21] The mill started operating in June 2014.[22]

In 2010, Stora Enso acquired a 30 per cent stake in the Chinese printed paper packaging manufacturer Inpac. The ownership stake was later increased to 51 per cent, and in 2016, to 90 per cent.[23][24][25][26][27]

In September 2012, Stora Enso signed an agreement with Packages Ltd., the largest packaging company of Pakistan, to set up a joint venture named Bulleh Shah Packaging (Pvt.) Ltd. at Kasur, Pakistan. The ownership stake for Stora Enso was 35 per cent. In 2017, the stake was sold back to Packages Ltd., at a loss of EUR 19 million.[25][28][29][30][31]

Between 2006 and 2014, the share of paper products of the total sales decreased from 62 per cent to 38 per cent, while packaging and wood products increased their shares of the revenue, as the company, according to Bloomberg News, was "betting on renewable packaging as online shopping grows." In 2015, the Financial Times and Bloomberg News reported that Stora Enso was investing in biomaterials and renewable construction products as possible future growth areas.[1][22][32][33]

In July 2017, the Financial Times reiterated that a focus on renewable packaging, biomaterials and construction products formed part of the strategic direction of Stora Enso, while also reporting that the revenue from paper had decreased further to 30 per cent of the total sales. It also reported that the current and foreseeable market conditions were such that forestry industry companies in general received and could be expected to receive comparatively low shares of their profits from paper production.[34]

In 2018, Stora Enso, along with 23 other Finnish and Swedish companies, formed a joint venture named Combient for research and knowledge sharing in the areas of artificial intelligence, deep learning, big data and automation.[35][36]

Examples of notable products launched in 2017–2019 were

• cardboard-based packaging under the name EcoFishBox as an alternative to polystyrene boxes for transportation of fresh fish,[37][38][39]
• industrial-scale supply of lignin under the name Lineo as an alternative to phenol-based adhesives,[40][41][42][43][44]
• prototypes of biodegradable drinking straws,[45][46][47] DuraSense biocomposites which enable the use of renewable wood-based fibres which can be used as substitutes for fossil-based plastic[48][49] and
• a new sustainable RFID tag technology called ECO that is designed for intelligent packaging functionalities in supply chain, retail and e-commerce applications.[50][51] and
• a new retail solution which merges in-store and online shopping through RFID enabled e-kiosks. The service is offered in co-operation with Atos.[52]

In the beginning of 2020 Stora Enso started a new division called Forest. It includes[53]

• Stora Enso's forest assets in Sweden
• the 41% share of Tornator with the majority of its forest assets located in Finland
• wood supply operations in Finland, Sweden, Russia and the Baltic countries.

In 2020, Stora Enso offer products and services through six corporate divisions.[53]

• The Biomaterials division sells pulp, as well as additional products that can be extracted biochemically from wood and other sorts of biomass.[54]
• The Consumer board division sells varieties of paperboard for packaging of dry and liquid products, including food, as well as for graphic printing purposes.[22][54]
• The Forest division has wood supply operations in Finland, Sweden, Russia and the Baltic countries.[53]
• The Packaging solutions division sells corrugated fiberboard, other types of paperboard used in production of packaging containers, as well as complete packaging boxes and equipment and services related to packaging production.[22][54]
• The Paper division sells paper for commercial printing and office use, as well as services for the printing industry, such as paper supply management.[22][54]
• The Wood products division sells construction materials and fuels that have been produced using wood as a raw material.[22][54]

In 2019 there were the following five divisions operating:[53] The 2019 sales figures and relative contributions to group earnings by division are listed below.[4]

In 2019, the regional sales distribution was as follows:[4]

• Europe 73%
• Asia Pacific 17%
• North America 3%
• South America 2%
• Other countries 5%

The Stora Enso Headquarters in Helsinki was designed 1959-1962 by Alvar Aalto as the head office of Enso-Gutzeit Oy. The building has been in use since 1961. In 2008, Stora Enso sold the building to the German property company Deka Immobilien GmbH for €30 million and started renting the building from WestInvest InterSelect (part of Deka Group), while also declaring its intention to move to other rented premises in the Helsinki area. As of 2016, Stora Enso is still headquartered in the same building.[55][56][57][58]

Veracel is a joint venture between Stora Enso (50 percent ownership) and Fibria in Brazil.[25]

In Uruguay, Stora Enso (50 percent ownership) and Arauco operate the Montes del Plata joint venture.[25]

Since 1 December 2019, Annica Bresky has been the CEO of Stora Enso.[59]

Previous CEOs were

• Karl-Henrik Sundström (from 2014 to 2019)
• Jouko Karvinen (from 2007 to 2014) and
• Jukka Härmälä (from the creation of Stora Enso in 1998 to 2007).[22][60][61]

The board of directors in 2019: Jorma Eloranta (chairman), Hans Stråberg (vice chairman), Elisabeth Fleuriot, Hock Goh, Mikko Helander, Christiane Kuehne, Antti Mäkinen, Richard Nilsson and Göran Sandberg.[62]

In September 2018, the Finnish state was, through the state-owned Solidium fund and Social Insurance Institution of Finland), the largest owner by number of shares, while the Wallenberg family foundations, through FAM AB, was the second largest. These two owners were also the largest ones by number of votes.[5]

The five biggest owners on 31 March 2019 were:[5]

1. Solidium Oy: 10.7% of shares (27.3% of votes)
2. FAM AB: 10.2% (27.3%)
3. Social Insurance Institution of Finland (KELA): 3.1% (10.1%)
4. Varma Mutual Pension Insurance Company 1.2% (3.6%)
5. Ilmarinen Mutual Pension Insurance Company 2.8% (2.2%)

Following the merger, English became the lingua franca of the company. A study of the implications of this for the effectiveness of Stora Enso's internal business communication, published in the academic journal Business Communication Quarterly, concluded that the analyzed communication "seemed to work well".[63]

Metsä Group and Stora Enso received a sentence in value of €500,000 for forming a cartel in 2001.[64]

The North American part of the group was sold in 2007 to NewPage Corporation with a net loss of about 4.12 billion dollars. According to a Swedish television documentary, there have been accusations that to cover the loss, the accounting was manipulated, which was revealed in 2010.[65] The documentary also claims that huge dividend payments were made illegally and top management was aware of that fact and on purpose manipulated numbers to be able to pay dividends.

Gerard Goodwyn, the company's head of accounting who spoke publicly about the accounting mistake, was fired in 2010.[66]

In 2013, Stora Enso published a report written by independent law firms, which the company had commissioned to investigate the accusations. According to the report, the investigations performed did not find any evidence of illegal acts or wrongful financial reporting, apart from mistakes that had already been communicated and corrected by 2009.[67][68] The findings of the investigations were also been reported to the Finnish Financial Supervisory Authority, which found no reason to take further action. In articles commenting on the report, the Finnish newspaper Helsingin Sanomat stated that they had been contacted by the source of the accusations in 2010 but that, after attempting to confirm the accusations, they had not considered that there were sufficient grounds for a news story.[69][70]

Eucalyptus cultivation of Stora Enso has been discussed critically,[71] especially in relation to the 2011 documentary film Red Forest Hotel.[72]

Nova Scotia Forest Industries, the Canadian corporate identity of Stora Forest Industries (as it was known in the day)[73] in 1983 was pursued in the Nova Scotia Supreme Court—case name Palmer v Nova Scotia Forest Industries—and did emerge victorious. The case went on to influence the practice of Canadian environmental law.[74] What neighbours objected to was the spraying of the dioxin 2,4,5-Trichlorophenoxyacetic acid Agent Orange pesticide.[75]

The Swedish program "Kalla fakta" reported in 2014 that Stora Enso used child labor in its activities in Pakistan, and that the company had been aware of it since 2012.[76] In response, the company denied that child labor existed directly in the operations of its joint venture partner in Pakistan, but admitted that it was present in its supplier networks. It stated that its partner, Bulleh Shah Packaging, was taking short-term action to remedy the situation in areas where child labor was known to exist, and was also working to mitigate child labor in the long term by addressing its root causes. In 2017, Stora Enso divested its business interest in Pakistan.[28][29][30][31][77]

In 2019, at least 32 people got infected and two people died due to legionnaires' disease after being infected by steam coming from a Legionella pneumophila contaminated cooling tower of the Stora Enso factory located in Ghent, Belgium. The cooling tower had an aerobic count of over 1,000,000, about 10 times the urgent action limit of 100,000 micro-organisms per mL at 30 °C [78][79]