Partnership with Treesearch is a peerless opportunity to develop the future of packaging

One way to achieve this is the initiative Treesearch, a Swedish collaboration platform for fundamental research, knowledge and competence-building in the field of new and improved materials and speciality chemicals from forest raw material. The initiative involves the academic community, industry, private foundations and the Swedish government, with the aim of converting fundamental and pioneering research into hi-tech innovations to meet the challenges posed by climate change.

Billerud has been involved in Treesearch since the start back in 2017.

Treesearch was established based on a desire among the largest forest companies in Sweden to invest on a national scale in future solutions based on raw material from Swedish forests, and to secure a solid supply of skilled young professionals and research results to support the competitiveness of the forest industry. More companies joined in as the programme progressed and a vision was created for long-term and cohesive investment in bio-based materials and chemicals from forest raw material.

“Billerud's involvement was imperative in developing the collaboration platform, and that useful synergies could be established within the industry. A good deal of research simply cannot be started without a firm connection to industrial challenges. The industry has a key role to play in Treesearch; it is the reason why Treesearch was set up in the first place, and it is driving the work forward,” says Daniel Söderberg, Director of Treesearch.

“By joining forces, we create a platform where various partners can work together, and it is this working relationship that boosts efficiency, making it possible to achieve new developments more quickly. Running projects with different universities opens up the opportunity to work in environments where the researchers are already active, enabling the industry to pick up the results at an earlier stage. And it is here that Billerud has proved to be an excellent partner,” he continues.

“Treesearch brings together most players and also supports the Wallenberg Wood Science Center (WWSC), both through direct industrial cofounding of the research together with the Knut and Alice Wallenberg Foundation and involved universities, but also by extending the nationwide reach of research results, ensuring that they benefit many more people than would otherwise be the case. Billerud contributes with competence, project partnerships, and raw material. All contributions of knowledge regarding how we can close material flows and make greater use of renewable raw materials have the potential to be relevant in the context of climate issues,” explains Eva Malmström, Director of WWSC.

Since 2017, Billerud has run several projects for which we have been able to find funding through our membership in Treesearch. One example is the working relationship with researchers at KTH on the development of transparent paper. Here, researchers have come up with a method that dramatically simplifies the production of transparent paper with barrier function, thus opening up opportunities for new packaging materials.

“If we can make this work on a large scale, it will revolutionize industrial production of these type of materials that normally suffer from low production speed,” says Karoliina Junka, Billerud.

Via the Treesearch training platform, we have also provided training for a large number of employees, taking their skills to the next level.

“Treesearch is important to Billerud. The packaging industry is facing significant challenges as regards issues such as littering and pollution of the oceans. We believe that material from the forests has a key role to play in the various solutions, and to achieve our goal in this respect, we need to evolve and improve both our products and our processes. We need highly skilled people, ground-breaking research results and a shared desire to view the forest industry as instrumental in building the future. Treesearch is all about achieving that shared desire and creating a common pool of knowledge, backed by skilled people, to support our journey into the future,” says Micael Ragnarsson, Director, Innovation Project Portfolio, Billerud.

We at Billerud believe that co-creating the future of packaging is crucial to opening new doors and helping to improve everyday life. That is why Treesearch is such an important partnership programme for us.