Strategy
Our mission is to enable our customers to win by creating quality nonwovens. The objectives of our strategy are growth and improved profitability through sustainability, customer focus and efficiency.
Our vision is to be the frontrunner for nonwovens innovation and sustainability. Our strategic target is to grow and improve profitability through sustainability, customer focus and efficiency. We pursue growth by creating innovative and more sustainable nonwovens for our customers and improve our profitability through more efficient operations and a high performance culture. Our focus is on wipes. We strengthen our capabilities in Europe and the Americas and evaluate our opportunities in Asia.
We execute our strategy and aim to achieve our vision through our five strategic focus areas. We implement our Sustainability Agenda as an integral part of our strategy.
Progress in Strategy
Operational excellence
We continuously improve the efficiency and quality of our operations, promote the occupational health and safety of our employees, and increase cost awareness throughout the organization.
Safety is a top priority for us, and we are committed to protecting the health and safety of our employees. We do this by investing in a positive safety culture and constantly improving our processes and practices towards our common goal of zero lost time accidents (LTA).
We systematically develop our processes and operations to ensure our efficiency and high performance. In 2022, we continued to actively share best practices between our sites, and we had a special focus on overall efficiency and fire prevention.
Sustainability leadership
We leverage our pioneering fiber-based nonwovens know-how and our unique asset base to achieve a leading position in the sustainable nonwovens market.
We have a comprehensive offering of sustainable nonwovens and we are actively developing new products to meet the growing demand of sustainable alternatives. During 2022, we launched 12 sustainable products. These nonwovens are made of biodegradable, compostable and renewable plant-based fibers. To support our product development in nonwovens biodegradability we opened our own compost test center Green Lab in Nakkila.
Our target is to use resources efficiently and to operate with the smallest possible impacts on the environment. We have set concrete reduction targets for four environmental impact KPIs in our own operations: greenhouse gas emissions, energy consumption, water consumption and waste to landfill.
The shift to entirely fossil-free electricity in all our European plants and the installation of solar panels to our plant in Alicante in 2022 are concrete examples of our work to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions.
Differentiate with innovation and commercial excellence
We offer best-in-class products and build close relationships with our customers.
We have a versatile and experienced R&D team that has excellent know-how in sustainable fibers. Our pilot lines support our innovation work by, for example, enabling the testing of prototypes. These together enable our industry leading product development that is driven by customer needs. In 2022, we continued our innovation and sustainability workshops with our customers. Close collaboration enables us to understand and respond to the changing needs of our customers.
The share of new products of our net sales reflects our strong ability to innovate and meet the market needs – in 2022, the share of new products exceeded 30% of our net sales.
Great place to work
We concentrate on harnessing the organization’s positive energy and commitment to deliver results.
We are systematically measuring and developing our employee engagement. In 2022, we conducted our Vibe employee engagement survey for the third consecutive year. The results identified good progress in topics that were chosen as focus areas based on the previous survey. We will continue to use the results to plan and execute development actions to strengthen high performance and engagement.
We continued to develop a pay-for-performance culture and our processes and practices related to that. In 2022, we implemented renewed performance development process for our blue-collar employees and harmonized short-term incentive programs in all countries.
Dual operating model
We optimize our operations through separate operating models for our standard and specialty products. We allocate standard products into the production lines that are best suited for them, while making specialty products on smaller and more flexible production lines.
We have defined target portfolios for each production line to optimize the way we drive the lines. In 2022, we finalized the implementation of the metrics to follow up on our asset optimization efforts and reviewed and updated the target portfolios by production line. We will continue our operations in a way which enables us to deliver higher volume standard products with improved cost efficiency and at the same time address the more diverse customer needs concerning specialty products often produced in lower volumes.