Stora Enso, Finland, has signed strategic partnership agreements with three of the leading technical universities in Sweden and Finland. The aim of the agreements is to strengthen collaboration between Stora Enso and leading academic institutes through long-term competence development, joint research, and innovation incubation.

The strategic partnerships will result in concrete collaboration projects, based on needs identified in close dialog between the management of Stora Enso and the respective university management. The priority competence areas for research collaboration are bio-based chemistry, process solutions, digitalization, material science, and design.

"The aim is to leverage the agreements to tie our own research resources closer to these universities," said Markus Mannström, chief technology officer of Stora Enso. "This collaboration with leading engineering universities will support Stora Enso's transformation into a renewable materials company and allow us to further advance our positions in the field of innovation."

The partnership agreements also target the improvement of competence development within Stora Enso and an increase in student recruitment to those universities.

"There are so many interesting opportunities within our industry," said Lars Häggström, EVP Human Resources of Stora Enso. "If we can make the forest industry a more attractive workplace, it will attract more students to apply to the technical education programs of the universities. All of the involved parties will benefit from that."

The strategic partnership agreements with Aalto University, Chalmers University of Technology, and the Royal Institute of Technology were signed recently and are valid until further notice.

Stora Enso is a provider of renewable solutions in packaging, biomaterials, wooden constructions and paper on global markets. The company employs some 26 000 people in more than 35 countries, and its sales in 2015 were EUR 10.0 billion.