Partnership commits to sustainable wood industry and decarbonisation

The Luxembourg Institute of Science and Technology (LIST) and Kronospan Luxembourg, a manufacturer and distributor of wood-based panel products, have signed a five-year partnership framework agreement.

Source : Merkur
Date de publication : 22/04/2022

The partnership framework agreement places sustainability and the environment at the forefront, in particular for research and development, as well as PhD collaborative training activities related to the production of wood-based panels.

Alex Gambroudes, Kronospan Commercial Director stated, ‘Kronospan is working towards a more sustainable wood-based panel industry. We only purchase timber from the legal harvesting of sustainably managed forests in line with our own strict Kronospan forestry standards and the regulations of forest certification systems. I look forward to the partnership signed with LIST in order to assist with the further development of our sustainability strategy’.

The main areas of focus for the agreement are: sustainability assessments using environmental and social life cycle assessment (LCA); monitoring and controlling of air emissions; water and forestry management; optimising material streams; and the reduction of waste.

One of the first projects looks at monitoring and studying ways of improving the Kronospan decarbonisation strategy with an environmental impact analysis of the site in Sanem. To this end, LIST will collaborate with Kronospan to work on the sustainability assessment of its products, and to a larger extent their industrial value chain as a whole, in order to strengthen the company’s strategy aimed at significantly contributing to the decarbonisation of these activities at a local and European level.

Following the partnership agreement signing, LIST CEO Thomas Kallstenius said, ‘LIST is a centre of excellence in environmental sustainability, and we are happy to support the Luxembourg economy and in particular Kronospan, in its ambition towards reducing its environmental footprint while providing positive contributions to society, using science-based life cycle assessments’.

Kronospan is one of the world’s leading manufacturers and distributors of wood-based panel products with more than 40 sites and a presence in many more countries around the world, while LIST is specialised in applied scientific research with ‘sustainability by design’ at the forefront of all its projects. Together, the two complement each other in advancing the Kronospan decarbonisation strategy.