Mercer International Inc. Receives Improved ESG Risk Rating from Sustainalytics

NEW YORK, July 17, 2024 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Mercer International Inc. (“Mercer” or the “Company”) (Nasdaq: MERC), a global forest products company with operations in Germany, the U.S. and Canada, announces that it has received an ESG Risk Rating of 17.4 from Sustainalytics. This rating places Mercer in the low-risk group and the 20th percentile of the 16,215 companies rated worldwide. The rating marks a 4.0-point improvement since 2023, underscoring Mercer's ongoing commitment to sustainability and effective ESG risk management.

Juan Carlos Bueno, President and CEO of Mercer, stated, “The strong improvement in our Sustainalytics risk rating reflects our ongoing efforts to integrate sustainable practices into our core business operations. It also highlights our commitment to creating long-term value for our stakeholders by balancing environmental stewardship with responsible business growth.”

The Sustainalytics ESG Risk Ratings evaluate a company’s exposure to industry-specific material ESG risks and its management of those risks. Ratings are categorized across five risk levels: negligible (below 10 points), low (10-20 points), medium (20-30 points), high (30-40 points) and severe (above 40 points). In its specific industry (Paper & Forestry) and sub-industry (Paper & Pulp), Mercer was ranked in the 18th and 17th percentile, respectively, indicating superior ESG risk management compared to many of its peers.

Notably, in the Sustainalytics assessment, Mercer received a “Strong” rating for its management of ESG issues. Additionally, Mercer achieved “Low” ESG Risk ratings in critical areas such as water use, emissions, and carbon. Additionally, Mercer achieved “Negligible Risk” scores in the areas of community relations, corporate governance and human capital categories. These achievements reflect progress in workforce development, sustainable sourcing, environmental stewardship, and community engagement, underscoring Mercer's commitment to governance, reducing environmental impact, sustainable supply chains, safety and well-being.

“We are honored to be recognized in our industry and globally. Our Sustainalytics rating is a testament to our teams, who are engaged every day to deliver on our business, including ESG, goals,” said Bill Adams, Vice President, Sustainability and Innovations.

For further details, an abstract of the report is available on Sustainalytics’ website at Sustainalytics ESG Rating - Mercer International Inc.

About Mercer International Inc.

Mercer International Inc. is a global forest products company with operations in Germany, the USA, and Canada. Its consolidated annual production capacity is 2.1 million tonnes of pulp (air-dried tonnes, ADTMs), 960 million board feet of lumber, 210 thousand cubic meters of CLT, 45 thousand cubic meters of glulam, 17 million pallets, and 230,000 metric tonnes of biofuels. For further information on the company, please visit its website at mercerint.com.

About Morningstar Sustainalytics

Morningstar Sustainalytics is a leading ESG data, research, and ratings firm that supports investors around the world with the development and implementation of responsible investment strategies. For more than 30 years, the firm has been at the forefront of developing high-quality, innovative solutions to meet the evolving needs of global investors. Today, Morningstar Sustainalytics works with hundreds of the world's leading asset managers and pension funds who incorporate ESG information and assessments into their investment processes. The firm also works with hundreds of companies and their financial intermediaries to help them consider material sustainability factors in policies, practices, and capital projects. Morningstar Sustainalytics has analysts around the world with varied multidisciplinary expertise across more than 40 industry groups. For more information, visit www.sustainalytics.com

About Morningstar Sustainalytics ESG Risk Ratings

Morningstar Sustainalytics’ ESG Risk Ratings measure a company’s exposure to industry-specific material ESG risks and how well a company is managing those risks. This multi-dimensional way of measuring ESG risk combines the concepts of management and exposure to arrive at an assessment of ESG risk, i.e., a total unmanaged ESG risk score or the ESG Risk Rating, that is comparable across all industries. Sustainalytics’ ESG Risk Ratings provide a quantitative measure of unmanaged ESG risk and distinguish between five levels of risk: negligible, low, medium, high, and severe. Learn more about the ESG Risk Ratings here: www.sustainalytics.com/corporate-solutions/esg-solutions/esg-risk-ratings.

This press release contains information developed by Sustainalytics (www.sustainalytics.com). Such information and data are proprietary of Sustainalytics and/or its third-party suppliers (Third Party Data) and are provided for informational purposes only. They do not constitute an endorsement of any product or project nor investment advice and are not warranted to be complete, timely, accurate or suitable for a particular purpose. Their use is subject to conditions available at https://www.sustainalytics.com/legal-disclaimers.

Forward-Looking Statements

The preceding includes forward-looking statements that involve known and unknown risks and uncertainties that may cause our actual results in future periods to differ materially from forecasted results. Words such as "expects", "anticipates", "are optimistic that", "projects", "intends", "designed", "will", "believes", "estimates", "may", "could" and variations of such words and similar expressions are intended to identify such forward-looking statements. Among those factors which could cause actual results to differ materially are the following: the highly cyclical nature of our business, raw material costs, our level of indebtedness, competition, foreign exchange and interest rate fluctuations, our use of derivatives, expenditures for capital projects, environmental regulation and compliance, disruptions to our production, market conditions and other risk factors listed from time to time in our SEC reports.

APPROVED BY:

William D. McCartney
Chairman of the Board
+1 604 684-1099

Juan Carlos Bueno
Chief Executive Officer
+1 604 684-1099