Stora Enso Langerbrugge paper site today: A center of circular excellence

An integral part of the region's industrial landscape since its founding in 1932, our Langerbrugge site is strategically located in Ghent, Belgium and offers easy access to major transportation routes and markets. Today, it’s a modern recycling hub that processes an impressive 540,000 tons of recycled paper annually as a raw material. This includes everyday consumer packaging, like paper cups collected through circularity initiatives like The Cup Collective.

The site's circularity performance is a key part of its enduring legacy. It is self-sufficient in steam and produces about 75% of its own electricity from sources including external waste fuels, side streams from the paper recycling process, and wind. The site’s sustainability impacts extend to neighboring operations as well, like the Volvo Cars facility in Ghent. In 2016, Stora Enso and Volvo Cars opened a 4-kilometer hot water pipeline between their locations, a solution that heats Volvo’s buildings and reduces their Europe-wide CO2 emissions by 24%.

A circular partner for publishers
Our ongoing operations in Langerbrugge demonstrate the site's resilience in an age of digital transformation, signaling that traditional mediums like paper hold a lasting value in today’s world. The site’s journey continues, propelled by location, sustainability efforts, service, and product offering.

At Langerbrugge, we produce a range of recycled paper to meet customers’ needs for quality and environmental performance including newsprint and super calendered (SC) papers. The site is PEFC and FSC-certified, further supporting customers who emphasize the importance of fiber traceability. The papers produced here find their way into the hands of readers and consumers, carrying with them the promise of quality and circularity.

Recycled paper is well suited for other purposes, too. For example, in recycled containerboard to support demanding applications like e-commerce packaging. To further develop the Langerbrugge site and maximize the advantage of its prime location, we recently studied the possibility of converting one of the site’s two paper machines into a high-volume recycled containerboard line.

Commenting on the potential conversion, Rebekka Thielemann, VP, Product and Sales Recycled Containerboard said, “Our past study on the opportunity to deliver more recycled packaging to the market proved positive. However, as the company has communicated in the first quarter 2023 interim report, the availability of recycled containerboard in Europe currently meets market needs, and it was decided to postpone the conversion decision, which will be taken in due time.” She added, “While we remain agile and responsive to market trends, our dedication to our paper customers is unwavering. We are fully committed to continuing to provide the high-quality products and service excellence that our clients have come to expect from us for the foreseeable future, solidifying Langerbrugge's legacy as a cornerstone of paper production.”

Choosing Langerbrugge as an expert partner
As our Langerbrugge site continues its journey towards excellence in papermaking, it remains a model of how tradition and technology can converge to create a robust, circular economy. It's not only a hub for premium paper products, but also a symbol of our commitment to innovation and environmental stewardship. Today, we stand ready as an expert partner in circularity to equip customers with renewable paper solutions made for a new era.