At our tree nursery, fifty million seedlings are raised each year to produce new forest on SCA's lands and land belonging to private landowners in the region. We replace every tree we harvest with three new ones, either through natural regeneration or planting.

Responsible forest management
However, responsible forest management means far more than simply planting new trees. The forest is also the habitat for thousands of animals and plants. Whenever felling takes place, certain areas that are important for vulnerable species are saved. Old growth forests and other forest areas with high nature qualities are entirely spared from felling. We show consideration for the Sami people and their reindeer husbandry.

SCA received FSC certification in 1999. Supported by the ISO 14001 environmental management system, we ensure that we maintain a systematic and forward-looking environmental program.

Our customers' ever-increasing quality demands extend all the way out into the forest. The importance of choosing the right trees for sawn timber products is obvious, but the raw material is also of crucial importance for fiber products. Ortviken paper mill requires wood that is not more than three weeks old - from felling to processing - while the chlorine-free bleaching process at the Östrand pulp plant also requires raw materials of the highest quality.

Getting the right timber to the right plant at the right time demands a combination of knowledgeable and efficient logging teams using state-of-the-art, computer-controlled machines, meticulous planning for time horizons extending from one week to more than a century, and efficient logistical planning. And this is equally true whether the customer is one of our own sawmills or processing plants, SCA Packaging's liner mill or one of the many privately owned sawmills in the interior of northern Sweden that are supplied with timber from SCA's forests.