The trainee program consists of separate assignments, and the first one was called Sustainability in Strategy. Sustainability is at the core of the UPM Raflatac business. As the topic is increasingly important also to end-users and our customers, there was a need to develop Sustainability into a more concrete part of business strategies. Work was divided to three; we started with an analysis of the existing processes, projects and initiatives in our Sustainability offering. The second part was to study emerging Sustainability topics and finally assess the significance and potential impact of these to UPM Raflatac.
During the autumn, I got to meet and interview our experts at UPM Raflatac and UPM around a long list of Sustainability topics, varying from Circular economy to traceability, regulation and human rights. Moreover, we arranged workshops to bring together experts in Sourcing, Operations and Business Development at UPM Raflatac to discuss their views of the concrete impacts of covered topics.
I learned how broad our Sustainability offering is and how interesting partnerships we have already today. Our Sustainability experts work with everything from new product development, participation in conferences and networks to optimizing logistics and transport emissions. One great example is The Biofore Site concept, that aims to develop Sustainability thinking at our sites so that everyone can take initiative and help us reach our Sustainability targets. However, we set the bar high which means we can’t tackle complex Sustainability issues alone; strong partnerships with organizations, suppliers, customers and end-users are definitely the UPM Raflatac way forward.
I truly enjoyed working with this assignment. I got to meet many of our enthusiastic and experienced professionals while learning a lot about UPM Raflatac and labeling business.I’ve been thrilled to see that as an outcome of the project we’ve introduced a new method to systematically integrate sustainability aspects to business strategy.
Looking forward to see what the future brings!
With summery regards, Senja