Iggesund Paperboard’s mill in Workington, UK has been awarded the new Platinum level by the international assessment company EcoVadis.

EcoVadis assesses companies’ corporate social responsibility (CSR) achievements, and has performed more than 65,000 assessments in over 200 sectors in 160 countries. In 2020, EcoVadis revised its medal thresholds and introduced a new medal, Platinum, specifically to reward the highest scoring companies in the EcoVadis network. The Platinum level includes the top one percent of all rated companies.

Iggesund Paperboard’s mill in Workington, where its Incada paperboard brand is made, joins the company’s mill in Iggesund, Sweden, where Invercote is made, in being awarded EcoVadis Platinum.

Johan Granås, head of sustainability at Iggesund Paperboard, said, ‘To us, this is a prestigious confirmation that both of our mills have a robust structure in our work with sustainability. Even more important is what it means to our customers; apart from excellent product quality, they can rely on the fact that the products are surrounded by sustainability measures that match the product quality.’

The Workington mill runs on more than 90% bioenergy. Apart from supplying the board production with green energy, the mill also delivers green electricity to the UK’s National Grid power supply network.

Lorna Casson, environmental engineer at the Workington mill, commented, ‘No matter how modern your machinery is, the final decisions are always made by people. We have started to introduce environmentally motivated objectives for operators, which depend on working closely together as a team to understand the effects of their actions on the rest of the process.  As an example, we have been able to reduce the steam and electricity consumption per tonne by 10% over the last years.’

Mr Granås added, ‘I’m both impressed by, and proud of the innovative actions we have taken in both mills, motivated by the fight against climate change.’