Helsinki and Paris, February 2003
UPM-Kymmene and Antalis announced today that they started exchanging papiNet messages for live commercial transactions via the Expresso Paper Platform at the beginning of January 2003.
UPM-Kymmene and Antalis are two of the ten leading paper producers and merchants who founded Expresso Paper Platform BV in 2001. All the founding members are targeting efficiency gains and service improvements from their use of the Expresso platform.
Expresso Paper Platform BV ("Expresso") offers the paper industry an e-commerce solution that provides benefits across the whole supply chain from paper manufacturer to the end-customer. This industry-led initiative enables trading partners in the paper industry to improve the speed, transparency and efficiency of their transactions and administration.
Expresso's mission is to become the leading electronic transaction and supply chain visibility platform for the paper industry. By enabling improved supply chain management and encouraging the use of standards, Expresso will enable the benefits of e-commerce to be achieved and contribute to increased supply chain efficiency within the industry.
Pierre Darrot, CEO Antalis, mentioned information standardisation and the improvement of the speed, accuracy and efficiency of transactions between trading partners as the key reasons that Antalis invested in the development of the Expresso Paper Platform.
Ken Ehrnrooth, Senior Vice President, Sales and Marketing for fine paper at UPM-Kymmene said "Now that we have one connection live and as we start testing with our other customers we can already see the value of having a single standards based connection through which we transact business, instead of individual connections with each customer".
Both UPM-Kymmene and Antalis are in an advanced stage of testing with their other trading partners over the Expresso platform, and they expect several new connections to go live this year.
Further information:
UPM-Kymmene: Ken Ehrnrooth, Senior Vice President, Sales and Marketing, UPM-Kymmene Fine and Speciality Papers,
tel. +49 4963 401 1700
Pehr-Eric Pått, Senior Advisor, UPM-Kymmene Fine and Speciality Papers,
tel. +358 204 15 0524
Antalis: Sylvie Noqué, Communications Director, tel. +33 (0)1 56 43 28 52
UPM-Kymmene Group is the world's leading producer of printing papers. The Group's turnover in 2002 exceeded EUR 10 billion and it has approx. 35,500 employees. UPM-Kymmene's main products include publication papers as well converting materials and wood products. The Group's total annual papermaking capacity is 11.5 million tons. The company has production plants in 18 countries. UPM-Kymmene's shares are quoted on the Helsinki and New York stock exchanges.
Antalis is a leading BtoB distributor of communications support material (papers & envelopes, packaging, promotional and visual communication products). Co-leader in Europe and #4 worldwide, Antalis employs a staff of 7,000 serving the needs of over 180,000 clients, both companies and printers, in 35 countries, with revenues of 2.5 billion Euros for 2001.
