Forestry firm Stora Enso to supply Diageo pulp for paper whisky bottles
11/05/2021 07:14
By Essi Lehto
HELSINKI, May 11 (Reuters) - Finnish forestry firm Stora
Enso STERV.HE said on Tuesday it would start supplying pulp
for sustainable packaging company Pulpex, a research and
development venture of British beverage maker Diageo DGE.L .
Stora Enso and Pulpex will also work together to build a
scalable high speed production line for bottles and other
packages out of pulp fibre in a commercial capacity in 2022, the
companies said in a joint statement.
"The first high-speed line will be a demonstrator to show
whether we can do this on an industrial scale and at the cost
level we are expecting," said Sohrab Kazemahvazi, senior vice-
president of Stora's formed fiber unit.
In addition to Diageo's brands, Pulpex said it was working
with Pepsi PEP.O , Unilever ULVR.L , GSK GSK.L and Castrol,
which are committed to together produce 750 million paper
bottles in a year.
The bottles are made by molding the pulp directly into
shape, skipping the step of first making it into a flat board,
Kazemahvazi told Reuters. The bottle is then lined with plastic
but will still fit into the paper waste stream, he added.
"We use no PET barrier and if we use plastic, we want to
keep the bottles recyclable and in case they end up in Nature,
biodegradable," Kazemahvazi said.
The European Union is prioritising recycling of package
materials and limiting plastic use in a plan to halve waste by
2030. urn:newsml:reuters.com:*:nL4N2AI3LV
Last July, Diageo said it would test the Pulpex bottle by
launching Johnnie Walker whisky in a paper bottle in 2021.
urn:newsml:reuters.com:*:nL3N2EK201
(Reporting by Essi Lehto; Editing by Clarence Fernandez and
Rashmi Aich)
((Essi.Lehto@thomsonreuters.com; +358505412375;))