HELSINKI, Finland -- Stora Enso announced it has signed strategic partnership agreements with three of the leading technical universities in Sweden and Finland. The aim of the agreements is to strengthen collaboration between Stora Enso and leading academic institutes through long-term competence development, joint research and innovation incubation.

The strategic partnerships will result in concrete collaboration projects, based on needs identified in close dialogue between the management of Stora Enso and the respective university management. The priority competence areas for research collaboration are bio-based chemistry, process solutions, digitalisation, material science and design.

"The aim is to leverage the agreements in order to tie our own research resources closer to these universities," says Markus Mannström, Chief Technology Officer of Stora Enso. "This collaboration with leading engineering universities will support Stora Enso's transformation into a renewable materials company and allow us to further advance our positions in the field of innovation."

The partnership agreements also target the improvement of competence development within Stora Enso and an increase in student recruitment to those universities.

"There are so many interesting opportunities within our industry," says Lars Häggström, EVP Human Resources of Stora Enso. "If we can make the forest industry a more attractive workplace, it will attract more students to apply to the technical education programmes of the universities. All the involved parties will benefit from that."

The strategic partnership agreements with Aalto University, Chalmers University of Technology and the Royal Institute of Technology were signed recently and are valid until further notice.