Too busy to visit us? We’ll bring the forest to you!

One of our long-standing customers, James Cropper Plc, has just hosted us for a hybrid one-day event at their mill in Cumbria in the north of England. Sales Director Maria Staxhammar and Technical Product Manager Ann Nilsson were on site at James Cropper’s mill, while Jonas Larsson, Head of Business Support and Senior Advisor Forestry, and Eva Gustafsson, Sustainability Strategist, joined remotely. Some 15 James Cropper employees attended the event, from Sales personnel to Product Quality and mill technicians. Our customer Cropper chose the subjects they most wanted us to cover.

“We discovered that we have a great deal in common,” said Staxhammar. “We are both family-owned businesses with climate mitigation and innovation at the top of our agendas. A tailor-made day ensured we covered the subjects most relevant to our customer, so no time was wasted. Since sustainability was a high priority for them, we dedicated the day to this topic. The hybrid format meant we could invite our experts to join from Sweden so they could present in detail and generate a dialogue with the customer through an open Q&A.” 

Ann Nilsson explained wood structure and fibre dimensions as well as our product portfolio, pulp qualities and applications. After lunch, since James Cropper was particularly keen to learn more about our sustainability model, Jonas Larsson talked specifically about his role as a Södra member and offered a ‘digital forest excursion’ to his forest estate and its management, including the Green Plan, nature conservation, wood sorting and how we use digitalisation in the forest.

Eva Gustafsson explained Södra’s sustainability and innovation strategy and our commitment to Net Zero targets, as well as offering an overview of the pulp mill as biorefinery, explaining the ever-growing array of innovations from lignin and tannin to OnceMore® and Spira.

“The beauty of a tailor-made hybrid event is that we can dedicate numerous people to the day and the customer can involve as many of their team as they like,” added Staxhammar. “In addition to our customer gaining an insight into how we work and learning about the family forestry model, we had a chance to ignite the spark for future discussion on a variety of issues. The day generated a lot of questions, so it really was productive and hopefully we shall do it again.”