Great Britain Sustainability Sustainable innovation

Sustainable innovation

Forests are important for the global transition to a sustainable bioeconomy. Forests can now deliver more smart products than ever before. These include clothing, food, new packaging materials, various types of filters and vehicle fuels. But we believe we can develop even more forest-related solutions and innovations.

Targets: New sustainable alternatives

We invest heavily in research and development. The aim is to commercialise at least three products with better sustainability performance than currently available alternatives every year until 2020.

We are looking at a wide range of areas – next-generation biofuels, replacing oil-based chemicals with bio-based chemicals and identifying new material concepts – to name just a few of our focus areas.

This is where we are now

In 2019, the goal was reached as Södra has in the last few years commercialized five new products with better sustainability performance.

Södra’s areas of innovation include:

Forest

Increased forest production, higher levels of productivity and conservation, forest management methods, better planning and digitisation.

Sawn timber

Wood processing, product development, design and logistics.

Paper

Higher product quality and more resource-efficient mills.

Textiles

Forest-based fabrics to replace synthetic fibres or cotton, for example.

Chemicals

Biochemicals to replace fossil raw materials.

Energy and fuel

Increasingly refined forms of energy with much broader applications, and new energy carriers for future energy sources.

Related links

Innovation