Reflections:
After an invaluable career path in South Africa, spending 15 years in the printing industry, I moved to Hamburg, Germany, in 2008 and joined the packaging industry in containerboard. I think that my insights and experiences from these customer and supplier perspectives, both in print and containerboard, will help contribute to further building and growing the valuable relationships with Södra’s customers.
It’s been a flying, exciting, eye-opening and super impressive start at Södra. I have been so openly and warmly welcomed by everyone and already feel a close part of the very proud Södra family.
I was aware that the forest was at the heart of the business but hadn’t fully appreciated the extent to which the company uses every part of the tree, from pioneering innovations such as OnceMore® and the Liquid Forest™ range of biochemicals, to Södra not only being energy self-sufficient, but also a green energy producer. This makes working for Södra a very attractive prospect and I am very much looking forward to communicating the full extent of the company’s sustainability model further to our customers.
I love the fact that Södra has a long-term approach and incredibly strong values which I share; a commitment both to the environment but also to people – its customers but also its staff and its members, the forest owners. Södra really is a case of economics and sustainability being inextricably linked. Pulp is the magic ingredient from the customer’s perspective and it’s exciting to be in this part of the value chain now, at the start of the process whose finished products contribute to a more sustainable world.
