The Navigator Company has been selected to sit on the Executive Committee of the World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD), comprising more than 200 CEOs from international corporations. Navigator is the only Portuguese company and the only company in the forestry sector worldwide to sit on this management board, acknowledging the company’s status as a world leader in sustainability committed to achieving carbon neutrality by 2035.

More than 200 world leaders are meeting for the first time, in Portugal, for the WBCSD Council Meeting, which will run until next Thursday in Lisbon to discuss challenges, solutions and commitments aimed at accelerating the transition to a sustainable world. The WBCSD’s companies come from a number of different business sectors from major world economies on every continent, representing 19 million employees and more than $8.5 trillion in sales, or around 10% of world GDP.

The Navigator Company, in partnership with a Scandinavian company, has co-chaired the Forest Solutions Group, a global sectoral group driving the agenda for sustainable development which recently launched the Forest Sector SDG Roadmap, a benchmark document for the forestry sector in this domain, in accordance with the goals of the United Nations.

During the WBCSD Council Meeting, The Navigator Company will conduct two guided visits for more than 50 participants of diverse nationalities representing more than 40 companies. One of them, scheduled for 17 October, includes a forest cleaning volunteer initiative in the Serra da Arrábida nature park in Setúbal. The second, to be held on 18 October, will give an overview of the company’s integrated business to all participants, who will discover the Espirra Nurseries (the largest tree nursery in Europe), one of its forest areas and the Setúbal industrial complex, where guests will see Europe’s biggest UWF paper machine.

As part of the WBCSD Council Meeting, and reinforcing its commitment to biodiversity, BCSD Portugal (to which The Navigator Company belongs), in conjunction with other business organizations for sustainable development belonging to the WBCSD’s Global Network, is launching today the Lisbon Declaration, an international agreement under which these organizations pledge to work together with their local associated companies to protect, promote and restore biodiversity.

The Navigator Company is an integrated producer of forests, pulp and paper, tissue and energy, whose activity is carried out in modern, large-scale factories, with cutting-edge technology, and which is a benchmark of quality in the sector.

The Navigator Company produces pulp and paper using forests planted exclusively for this purpose. Each year, our nurseries give life to more than 12 million trees. These nurseries – the biggest in Europe – produce 135 different species of trees and shrubs. Many of these have no economic utility but are financed by Navigator to sustain diversity and guarantee the continuity of the species.

For example, in 2017, the forests managed by The Navigator Company in Portugal had a carbon stock – not including carbon in the soil – equivalent to 5.4 million tonnes of CO². This is the same as the emissions that would be generated by 1.5 million cars travelling around the perimeter of planet Earth.

The Navigator Company has taken on the formal commitment of achieving carbon neutrality by 2035, by reaching the targets laid out by the European Union and Portugal 15 years early. As such, it became the first Portuguese company, and one of the first worldwide, to set this ambitious goal.

This commitment is the culmination of a sustainability strategy already distinguished, at the start of 2019, with the ranking of global leader in the fight against climate change by the Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP), achieving a prominent position on this organization’s “A” list. In 2018, The Navigator Company was recognized for its efforts to reduce emissions, decrease climate risks and develop an economy with a low carbon footprint, and was the only Portuguese company to obtain the highest score in an elite group of five companies from the global pulp, paper and forest sector to receive this distinction.

The company is the third-largest Portuguese exporter, representing approximately 1% of the national GDP and 2.4% of national goods exported, and generates the greatest National Value Added. In 2018, The Navigator Company’s turnover was around €1.6 billion, with 91% of the Group’s products sold outside of Portugal in approximately 130 different countries.

The Group has vertically integrated forest activity with its own Forest Research Institute, which is a global reference in the genetic improvement of the Eucalyptus globulus. It creates a vast forest area in Portugal, 100% certified by the FSC® (FSC C010852) and PEFC™ (PEFC/13-23-001) international systems. It also has the installed capacity of 1.6 million tonnes of paper, 1.6 million tonnes of pulp (80% integrated into paper), 120 thousand tonnes of tissue converting, producing around 2.5 TWh of electricity each year. It is responsible for approximately 4% of the energy production in Portugal and 52% of the energy produced from biomass.