On a roll with waste management at Essity

A global leader in hygiene and health products, Essity manufactures a range of well-known brands such as Cushelle, Plenty, Velvet, Bodyform, TENA and Tork. The Manufacturer Editorial team paid a visit to the company’s Trafford Park mill in Manchester to find out more.

Originally founded in Sweden in 1929, today Essity employs around 36,000 people worldwide, producing toilet tissue, paper towels, napkins, menstruation, incontinence and menopause products, medical devices for compression, orthopaedics and wound care, as well as soaps, sanitisers and dispenser units. The company’s Trafford Park site is an integrated mill, meaning that paper is both manufactured on-site and also converted into products that consumers would find on the shelves.

Sustainability credentials

Essity has been recognised as one of the top 100 most sustainable companies in the world and has recognised a growing awareness among public and private stakeholders of environmental and social sustainability issues such as climate change, nature conservation, human rights and equality.

Reducing its impact on the planet is therefore a key commitment in Essity’s strategy. Social and environmental sustainability is a strategic priority for the company to ensure future growth and competitiveness, while reducing risks. Essity is one of the UK’s largest users of recycled fibre, utilising around 100,000 tonnes last year. However, as James Bergin, Continuous Improvement Specialist at Trafford Park explained, changing societal trends have thrown up a significant challenge in this regard.

Essity is aiming to transform into a net zero company while the business is running, securing continuous supply of high performing products

“Because of the increase in working from home, the move from offline to online and the shift towards paperless working practices in recent years, there’s less printing paper being produced, meaning there’s less high quality paper available for us to use in our products.

“Therefore, we have invested significantly in a state of the art recycling plant in Prudhoe, Northumberland, which, when completed in 2025, will enable us to make paper products from a lower grade of recycled fibre.”

In recent years, Essity has also pioneered the world’s first process to recycle used hand towels from public washrooms, and can now manufacture new paper products using recycled paper cups from hot and cold drinks.

However, fibre can only be recycled so many times before the quality degrades to the point that it becomes unusable. It’s therefore important that there is a balance between recycled fibre and virgin fibre in Essity’s products. As such, the company has also made a commitment to and investment in sustainable sourcing of any virgin fibre required to make its paper products.

Essity updated its sourcing policy for fresh fibre and strengthened its targets for its fibre supply to be fully Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) or Program for the Endorsement of Forest Certification (PEFC) certified. All Essity consumer tissue products in the UK now carry the FSC or PEFC logos meaning that strict forestry management plans are followed in the certified forests where virgin fibre is sourced.

These plans ensure appropriate replanting takes place considering, among other things, the conditions, growth and survival rate of the trees, as well as biodiversity. These plans often look forward many tens if not hundreds of years into the future which is reflected by the fact that forests in Europe are now growing at a rate of around 1,500 football pitches every day.

The minimum requirement for Essity’s fibre is that it will always meet the FSC Controlled Wood standard, which means that the origin of the fibre has been verified by an independent third-party. FSC is an organisation that sets robust and fully transparent standards for responsible forest management that safeguards biodiversity, proper forest conservation and consideration for the people living in and by the forests.

Essity regularly participates in stakeholder dialogues concerning forest management, which include other key stakeholders such as environmental organisations WWF and Greenpeace, as well as local stakeholders.

Drive to net zero

Essity’s ultimate goal is to be a net zero business by 2050 and, to shape the way towards that long-term commitment, the company has goals in place for 2030 that are focused around the Science Based Targets initiative, specifying its emission reduction targets in Scope 1, 2 and 3 (Scope 1 and 2 emissions have already been reduced by 26% and Scope 3 emissions by 10% compared to 2016 levels).

In addition, Essity is further aiming for zero production waste by 2030 as well as high amounts of recycled materials in packaging (85% by 2025). Plans beyond 2030 are also taking shape, with a number of pilots in place to assess breakthrough technologies and innovations for the hygiene and health solutions of the future.

These are focused on two key areas of the company’s global sustainability strategy – environmental sustainability, which refers to work in reducing impact on the planet; and social sustainability, relating to improving wellbeing for people and societies. Among the innovations already introduced is the aforementioned Tork PaperCircle, the world’s first paper towel recycling service.

This is helping businesses to go circular by collecting and recycling used paper hand towels into new tissue products – turning waste into a resource. Tork PaperCircle helps reduce waste by up to 20% and total carbon footprint by 40%. This service is available in several European markets.

Essity has also become the first UK manufacturer to remove the cardboard core from the centre of toilet and kitchen towel rolls, creating a coreless product line which has reduced waste and materials used. Coreless technology supports the double roll concept that results in a reduction in packaging of up to 59%. The benefits of this development also allows for greater optimisation of transport, storage and supermarket shelf space.

“Coreless is unique and the technology to make that happen is quite different to our normal production process, and that results in a large number of benefits,” James added.

“For example, with our coreless kitchen roll, we’ve been able to take around 13 million tubes out of the supply chain, so in terms of sustainability, reducing material from our processes is the direction we want to be heading, and coreless technology allows us to meet that requirement.”

Specifically on the coreless line, Essity has also deployed a high-tech quality control system. This can take multiple images of the various sides of the roll, and sense when the product falls short of the required standard. It can then reject the defect product off the line, ensuring that no sub-standard products are sent to customers.

“I’m leading on waste reduction here at Trafford Park, and that also supports our sustainability plan of where we’re trying to reduce the cost of production,” James continued.

“We’re currently at the data gathering stage and we’ve laid out a map which has identified the areas where we’re generating waste. We’re now gathering the data to find out which of these waste streams is the biggest, so we know which ones to tackle first.”

Change alongside production

Essity is of course a global hygiene and health player, serving millions of people in need of hygiene and health essentials. This means the company is grappling with the need to transform into a net zero company while at the same time, running the business and securing continuous supply of high performing products.

This has come with its own operational challenges. Like most manufacturers that are trying to implement change, Essity cannot simply stop a manufacturing site, work on change management for several months and then switch production back on again; everything needs to happen while operations on adjacent lines are running.

As such, at the company’s Kostheim site in Germany, Essity recently managed a pilot project to switch the energy source from fossil gas to hydrogen without the need to stop any machines. Not only that, but the net zero agenda comes with its own uncertainties which has thrown up a number of challenges of its own, namely around technology and regulation.

Essity continues to drive towards net zero despite the challenges of uncertainties around technology and of regulatory demands. As such, a range of pilot programmes and testing is enabling the identification of relevant building blocks such as a water-free tissue production process Essity is developing together with an external partner called Voith. The process is about to be incorporated into an industrial prototype after successful small scale testing.

From a regulatory perspective, Essity is increasingly faced with a scattered set of demands which makes it difficult to rapidly scale up globally impactful new materials, technologies and processes.

Further reductions and talent

“Within the Trafford Park site we’re focused heavily on the reduction of plastic usage within our processes, optimising how we use plastic within our primary and secondary film and stretch wrap,” added Charlotte Bascombe, Plant Initiative Leader at Trafford Park.

“We’re always looking at the potential to implement paper packaging within our processes, introducing post-consumer recyclables (PCR) into our primary film, and hopefully into our secondary film in due course. We’ve increased PCR to 55% this year.”

Like many manufacturers, skills are also on the agenda for the present and future strategies. At the Manchester site Essity has a programme which employs around 25 apprentices a year in a range of different departments across the site. Furthermore, the company is in the process of building a training academy for apprentices with a heavy focus on improving talent, developing people and returning them to site.

Interestingly, the company’s focus on sustainability and net zero has been an enabler for attracting talent to the workforce, as James explained: “Anytime we talk to new recruits, our focus on sustainability is always a key driver for people’s decision to work here.”

Essity has also been running a Women in Technology (WIT) programme since 2015. The four-month programme for female employees contains motivating sessions, practical exercises for soft skills development, inspirational senior colleagues’ examples, networking and sessions from Essity top management.

Since the beginning of the programme the number of female line managers at Essity has more than doubled and the majority of the former participants have taken on new career opportunities. The programme was expanded to other parts of the organisation in 2020.

Future strategy

Sustainability and innovation are often intrinsically linked and as such Essity is constantly looking at how to improve and respond to evolving needs and wants in the market. Its focus on sustainability, which has received multiple external awards and recognition, means the company is well-placed for the future. Sustainability is one of Essity’s key pillars in its corporate strategic framework. “We believe that we need to win in sustainability if we want to grow our business successfully,” James added.

In September, the company launched its five year strategy, the headline of which is to ensure Essity has its essential products in every home in EMEA. It was presented to the leadership teams across the EMEA markets earlier in the year and was launched to the UK employee base last month. The key ethos is that over the past five years, the company’s strategy has been very reactive due to COVID and then the energy and cost of living crisis.

Essity is now in a position where there is confidence that, over the next five years, the company can future plan and build forwards, rather than having to constantly react to what the market or economy is doing.

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