Revealed at a customer event on new EU supply chain regulations at the Portuguese firm’s eucalyptus tree nursery in Setubal, near Lisbon, the new footprinting method gives Navigator customers even more accurate carbon emissions data for the firm’s paper stocks.
Paula Guimarães, Navigator’s sustainability director, told Printweek that the firm had decided to adopt CEPI’s methodology for cradle-to-gate emissions in order to give customers as clear as possible an insight into the manufacturer’s carbon footprinting.
“It’s all about transparency and providing our customers with information that has an accessible methodology behind it. So it’s a question of opening up and letting customers know our position, giving them the tools for a grounded, responsible choice about the products they’re buying,” she said.
The firm expects to invest over €350m (£293m) from 2019-28 in decarbonisation alone in order to reach its target of reducing its Scope 1 and 2 greenhouse gas emissions by 63% by 2035 from a 2020 baseline, and Scope 3 emissions by 37.5%. It aims to cut direct emissions governed by the EU Emissions Trading System from its industrial complexes by 86% by the same deadline.
João Costa Correia, sustainability strategic projects manager at Navigator, added that the new methodology suited Navigator’s processes well, so it made sense to follow customers’ requests and apply the methodology.
“When customers request a specific methodology, they tend to request the CEPI Ten Toes methodology. It suits our processes and it’s flexible enough so that we can use the best information available to calculate it,” he said.
Correia warned, however, that the Ten Toes methodology was not suitable for comparison between producers.
“When a customer tries to compare our figures to our competitors’, it must be done with great care, because the data quality and criteria must be comparable.
“If they want to calculate their own Scope 3 emissions, they should use our CEPI Ten Toes figures. For benchmarking purposes we recommend third party methodology like FisherSolve. That way, all figures are calculated exactly the same way for all producers.”
In Q1 2025 (Jan-Apr) Navigator’s new recovery boiler at Setubal commenced operation, part of a €22m capex drive in Q1 alone on cutting waste and improving electricity efficiency, including a new cogeneration unit at its Aveiro tissue plant, the conversion of its Setubal lime kiln to biomass and other projects.
In early May, Navigator confirmed it would convert its woodfree uncoated paper (UWF) mill Setubal PM3 to lightweight flexible packaging paper production, though the conversion will not prevent UWF production on the machine.
Navigator claimed the machine, which has a capacity of around 180,000 tons of UWF to offer “outstanding performance” in flexible packaging paper, as the market is “dominated by smaller, older, and less efficient machines”. The mill will produce around 90,000-100,000 tonnes of flexible packaging paper, and will start operation in Q3 2026.
