Domtar Senior Leader Joins TAPPI Board of Directors

Cascades Inc. is pleased to announce that it has entered into an agreement with an affiliate of funds managed by affiliates of Apollo Global Management, Inc. to sell its 57.6% equity interest in Reno De Medici S.p.A. for an all-cash price of €1.45 per share, corresponding to a total net cash consideration of approximately €315.3 million. The purchase price is not subject to adjustment, except in case of potential leakages of value to the seller, provided that RDM's 2020 dividend that was paid to the shareholders in May 2021 will not be considered a leakage. The selling price represents a 24% premium to RDM's 90-day volume weighted moving average share price, and a 6.9x multiple to RDM's last twelve months adjusted operating income before depreciation as of March 31, 2021. Upon closing of the recently announced acquisition of Eska Group, the RDM group operations will grow to nine mills and five specialized cutting and sheeting centers across Europe and the USA.

Trust, but verify. This is the value of third-party assessments including the annual review undertaken by EcoVadis. All three of Sappi’s manufacturing regions – Europe, North America and South Africa – once again achieved the highest possible rating, platinum, in the annual EcoVadis Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) ratings. This achievement places the regions individually and Sappi collectively in the top 1% of over 90,000 companies assessed by EcoVadis. Enhancing trust is one of Sappi’s key strategic fundamentals. We work to make every day more sustainable for people, communities and the planet. We demonstrate this through our tangible actions, our partnerships, through public reporting, by the group’s alignment with the United Nations Global Compact and Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and importantly also through various assessments and verifications.

International technology group ANDRITZ has successfully started up the main equipment forming part of an innovative mechanical pulping line supplied to hygiene and health company Essity in Mannheim, Germany. The new system features a capacity of 100 bdmt/d and processes 100% wheat straw to produce bleached straw pulp for the mill’s own tissue production. As raw material for pulp production, the facility mainly uses FSC- and/or PEFC-certified thinning and waste wood from the area surrounding the mill. Essity has now also been using plant-based agricultural residue from local farms for the production of high-quality tissue since the new equipment was started up. The innovative process uses less water and energy and can thus be considered a breakthrough in sustainable tissue manufacturing. The plant in Mannheim is the first of its kind in Europe and the first in the world to operate on a large scale.