Around the time that leading Finnish publisher Siltala was securing the rights to publish one of the biggest sports books of the year – Heartbeats, the autobiography of tennis icon Björn Borg – CEO Arto Forsten was invited to a join a tour of Sappi’s Kirkniemi Mill, home of its Galerie range of papers.
The tour proved to be something of an eye-opener for Forsten, and a game-changer for his business and its next big book launch.
“The mill visit exceeded all my expectations,” he says. “Here was a local Finnish mill providing jobs for the local community that had a super impressive sustainability story to tell.”
That story encompassed Kirkniemi switching its production from being powered by fossil fuels to establishing an entirely new infrastructure making use of locally sourced, renewable biomass energy – and a consequent 90% cut in the mill’s direct greenhouse gas emissions.
“We were working on our environmental responsibility report at the time of my mill visit,” continues Forsten. “With almost all of our carbon footprint as a publisher coming from indirect emissions linked to our purchased goods, we need to be working with partners who are committed to serious decarbonisation. I saw Kirkniemi and the Galerie range delivering impressive results.”
Siltala had never used a Sappi paper for any of its books before. But the mill visit and the recent launch of Galerie Book have changed all that – with Heartbeats now published in Finland and printed on Galerie Book paper. (The original publishing rights for Heartbeats are held by Norstedts Förlag, with Siltala holding the rights for the Finnish edition.)
“The paper has the right creamy colour, comes in the weights we want and has the right sustainability story for us to use for other titles across our fiction and non-fiction range,” says Forsten, who was also recommended Galerie Book by trusted printer partner Otavan Kirjapaino.
“At Siltala, we want to work with partners who are committed to high quality standards, who can deliver great products and who are actually delivering on the sustainability targets they set themselves,” says Forsten in conclusion.
For Sappi, the value of working with like-minded, sustainably focused partners is also paramount. And with new, sustainably produced Galerie Book as part of the Galerie papers portfolio, that includes publishers and printers working with a wide variety of book projects.
If you want to publish or print your next book more sustainably, please get in touch with your local Sappi sales office. And to learn more about our Galerie Book product, click here.