Stora Enso launches a Green Bond Framework

Green Solutions

Stora Enso is integrating its sustainability agenda into funding and financial services to increase transparency and to highlight the positive environmental impact of its business.

The company has launched its Green Bond Framework as part of its Sustainable Finance approach. The ambition is to offer a loan format to support sustainability focused fixed income investors and to report the direct environmental impacts of some its investments and business activities. The group will use this bond format to complement its other funding sources.

Stora Enso’s strategy on Sustainable Finance is a natural part of its overall agenda on sustainability and an integral part of its focus on being one of the world’s leading renewable materials companies. Its goal is to work with funding partners for whom sustainability is a key part of their lending agenda. ‘We want to contribute to a scenario where the sustainability of business is a key metric for credit risk assessment. Key aspects of our strategy for sustainable finance are to increase transparency for our investors and to highlight the positive environmental impact of our business and related investments,’ said senior vice president treasurer Martin Ros. During December 2017 Stora Enso signed a sustainability linked €600 million revolving credit facility with a syndicate of 13 banks. The loan and the agreement have a direct link to its ambitious science based targets for reducing greenhouse gas emissions throughout the group’s value chain. The pricing of the loan is partly connected to its achievement of the science based targets.