European Commission awards grant of over Euro 400,000 for Metsä Tissue's sustainable low carbon tissue manufacturing project

ESPOO, Finland, Feb. 2, 2012 (Globe Newswire) - Metsä Tissue has been awarded a grant of over €400 000 by the European Commission as part of its Sustainable Industry Low Carbon (SILC) Scheme. Metsä Tissue is participating in the scheme with its Sustainable Low Carbon Tissue Manufacturing Project.

The project's main target is to analyse and develop concepts for the optimisation of heat recovery systems at all tissue paper mills operated by Metsä Tissue. The mills will adopt the template successfully established at two German mills in 2009-2010. The project is part of the company's Tissue 20 project, which aims to implement energy-saving actions to achieve a combined saving equal to 20 per cent of the company's 2007-level energy consumption by the end of 2012.

Metsä Tissue's project was one of only two projects to pass all the strict thresholds defined by the European Commission. The Commission confirms that the requirements were extremely strict in order to assure the quality of the accepted projects.

"This grant enables us to radically speed up the project realisation time," says Rudi Staszewski, Project Manager and Energy Efficiency Coordinator at Metsä Tissue.

"The forthcoming efficiency improvements are important steps mitigating climate change. This grant will give us an extra boost, enabling us to channel more resources into the valuable energy efficiency work being done at Metsä Tissue," confirms Jarkko Kaplin, Vice President, Purchasing and Energy at Metsä Tissue.

Metsä Tissue will be publishing the project results and will consult other companies and organisations on themes related to energy efficiency. The final report will be published at the end of the project.