The first deliveries of wood chips from UPM Biochemicals have been delivered by DB Cargo to the world’s first bio-refinery at Leuna in Germany.

UPM Biochemicals is based at Helsinki in Finland, and the delivery was a trial to determine the feasibility of using rail to transport the wood chips directly into the wood yard at Leuna.

Following the successful trial, UPM Biochemicals will now be able to transport wood sustainably by using rail instead of road.

It will also strengthen local supply chains and help secure the supply of critical raw materials.

The company used DB Cargo as it has a good record in sustainable and climate-friendly freight transport. It has also a long experience of transporting timber products by rail, as it has been transporting UPM’s paper and pulp products for several years.

The Leuna biorefinery is the world’s first industrial-scale biorefinery. It is currently going through its commissioning and start-up stages, and part of that work includes the procedures for wood handling and processing.

Wood chips in the first delivery from UPM Biochemicals were made of wood harvested from sustainably managed regional forests.

UPM Biochemicals is investing 1.18 billion in constructing the biorefinery. When complete and fully in production, it will take sustainably sourced, certified hardwood and convert it into the next generation of biochemicals.

These will contribute to the vital need to move away from fossil-based products to renewable materials across a wide range of industries.

For UPM Biochemicals, the Leuna biorefinery is part of a broader growth area, with its UPM Biorefining division building refineries designed to use sustainable biomass to produce a variety of renewable fuels and chemicals.

DB Cargo has extensive experience in transporting freight across borders by rail, as last year it exported rail tracks to Belgium for British Steel, and in February 2023 it delivered large quantities of aid in support of railway colleagues in Ukraine.

We will offer fully sustainable renewable chemicals with a significantly better CO2 footprint compared to fossil alternatives. It is paramount that we work on strategies to continuously optimize the environmental performance of our products further. Using rail as a transport mode does exactly that. And by partnering with DB Cargo, we can now rely on a well-known and capable rail logistics partner and have built a resilient and sustainable wood logistics setup for our biorefinery in Leuna.

Andreas Meggendorfer, Director Supply Chain & Sourcing at UPM Biochemicals

UPM and DB Cargo have been linked by a successful partnership for rail-based inbound logistics of timber for many years. We are therefore very pleased to now be an important supply chain partner for UPM at the new biorefinery in Leuna.

Thorsten Wartenpfuhl, SVP Sales Consumer Goods, Pulp & Paper, Timber at DB Cargo.