Yes, absolutely. As a resident or citizen of the Netherlands, you can easily invest in Svenska Cellulosa AB (SCA) through standard retail investment platforms operating in the Netherlands.

1. Stock Exchange & Ticker Details

Svenska Cellulosa AB is a major Swedish forestry, pulp, and paper company based in Sundsvall. It is listed on Nasdaq Stockholm (OMX Stockholm) in Swedish Krona (SEK).

• Class B Shares (SCAb): Ticker SCA B | ISIN: SE0000112724 (This is the primary liquid share class used by retail and institutional investors).
• Class A Shares (SCAa): Ticker SCA A | ISIN: SE0000171886 (Carries 10 votes per share vs. 1 vote for Class B, but trades with lower liquidity).

2. How to Buy from the Netherlands

You can place an order directly on Nasdaq Stockholm using any major Dutch bank or online broker that offers European equity trading:

• Popular Discount Brokers: DEGIRO, Interactive Brokers, Saxo Bank, or Trade Republic.
• Dutch Retail Banks: Rabobank, ING, or ABN AMRO (via their Zelf Beleggen investment accounts).

Steps to Purchase:

1. Open your investment platform and search for «Svenska Cellulosa» or the ISIN SE0000112724.
2. Select Nasdaq Stockholm (XSTO) as the primary exchange.
3. Place a limit or market order in Swedish Krona (SEK). Your broker automatically converts Euros (EUR) to SEK at execution via their standard foreign exchange rate (typically a ~0.25% FX fee).

3. Tax Considerations for Dutch Investors

• Box 3 Capital Tax (Netherlands): Shares in SCA are treated like any other investment asset in your annual Dutch income tax return (inkomstenbelasting under Box 3).
• Dividend Withholding Tax: Sweden imposes a 30% statutory withholding tax on dividends paid to foreign shareholders. However, under the Netherlands–Sweden Tax Treaty, Dutch tax residents are entitled to a reduced rate of 15%. Most Dutch brokers (e.g., DEGIRO, Saxo, major banks) automatically apply the treaty rate or assist with reclaiming the excess 15%.

Reint Jelger: How many km2 of forest does it own?

Gemini: Svenska Cellulosa AB (SCA) owns approximately 27,000 km² (2.7 million hectares) of land, making it Europe’s largest private forest owner.

Breakdown of Holdings

• Total Land Area: ≈27,000 km²
• Sweden: ≈26,000 km² located in northern Sweden, of which around 21,000 km² is classified as productive forest land (actively managed for timber production).
• The Baltics: ≈1,000 km² spread across Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania.

To put 27,000 km² in perspective, SCA’s land holdings cover an area nearly two-thirds the size of the Netherlands or roughly the size of the state of Massachusetts.

Reint Jelger: Do they cut the trees themselves and make them into sellable wood?

Gemini: Yes, entirely. SCA runs an end-to-end integrated value chain, meaning they harvest their own trees and process almost every part of the log into commercial products in their own facilities.

Rather than functioning merely as a land holding company, they manage the entire lifecycle: forest management → harvesting → manufacturing → logistics and sales.

How They Turn Harvested Trees into Sellable Products

When a tree is felled, SCA divides it by quality to extract maximum value:

                  ┌──> Sawlogs (Main Trunk) ──> Sawmills ─────────> Sawn Timber & Construction Lumber
                  │
Harvested Tree ───┼──> Pulpwood (Top/Thinner) ──> Pulp & Paper Mills ─> Packaging Board (Kraftliner) & Paper Pulp
                  │
                  └──> By-products & Bark ────> Biorefineries ────> Green Biofuels, District Heat & Energy

1. Sawn Wood & Timber (The Main Trunk): The straightest, thickest logs go to SCA’s sawmills and planing mills across Sweden. They turn these into sawn pine and spruce timber, construction lumber, exterior siding, and flooring sold to building merchants worldwide.
2. Pulp & Packaging Board (Pulpwood): Thinner logs and tops unsuitable for lumber are sent to SCA’s pulp and kraftliner mills (such as Östrand, Obbola, and Munksund). There, they process the wood fiber into bleached softwood pulp (used for tissues and medical applications) and kraftliner (high-strength paper used for corrugated shipping boxes).
3. Bioenergy & Chemicals (Sawmill Residue & Bark): Sawdust, bark, and tall oil (a pulp byproduct) are processed into solid biofuels, liquid biofuels (via joint ventures with fuel refiners like St1), and green electricity to power their own mills and surrounding communities.

Do They Harvest 100% with Their Own Employees?

• Logging Operations: SCA plans and oversees all timber harvests, using advanced forestry machinery equipped with GPS and automated log-measuring technology. While SCA owns the heavy machinery, a portion of the physical harvesting is conducted by specialized forestry contractors working directly under SCA’s strict FSC-certified forestry guidelines.
• External Purchases: SCA’s mills are so large that their own 27,000 km² of land supplies roughly 50–60% of their total raw material needs. To feed their sawmills and paper plants at full capacity, SCA’s Forest division purchases the remaining timber from small private forest owners across northern Sweden and the Baltic region.

Reint Jelger: Do you think it is a company that cares about ‚the environment‘?

Gemini: Whether Svenska Cellulosa AB «cares» about the environment depends entirely on whether you evaluate them through the lens of industrial carbon management or ecological biodiversity.

Because SCA is a commercial forestry giant, there is a sharp divide between how the company presents its environmental impact and how environmental scientists and climate activists view it.

The Corporate Argument: «A Climate-Positive Model»

From an industrial and macro-climate perspective, SCA positions itself as an engine for decarbonization. Their primary environmental claims center on three pillars:

1. Net Carbon Sink: SCA grows more wood than it harvests each year. Their growing standing tree volume actively absorbs carbon dioxide via photosynthesis, netting around 4 million tonnes of CO2​ sequestered annually in their forests.
2. Fossil-Free Substitution: They argue that using harvested wood for construction lumber, paper packaging, and bioenergy prevents the use of carbon-heavy alternatives like concrete, steel, plastics, and fossil fuels. In total, SCA calculates its aggregate «climate benefit» at roughly 12 million tonnes of CO2​ equivalent per year.
3. Sustainable Yield Certification: SCA’s operations are certified by international bodies like the FSC (Forest Stewardship Council) and PEFC, meaning they plant at least two to three new saplings for every tree felled.

The Environmentalist & Scientific Criticism: «Clear-Cutting & Biodiversity Loss»

Despite their net-zero framing, SCA faces heavy criticism from Swedish nature conservation groups (such as Skydda Skogen), international NGOs, and climate activists like Greta Thunberg. Their concerns focus on:

1. Destruction of Continuity & Old-Growth Forests: Critics document that SCA regularly clear-cuts «continuity forests»—ecosystems that have never been clear-cut before and contain 200- to 300-year-old trees, ancient deadwood, and rare lichens. Once a complex, old-growth ecosystem is clear-cut, planting uniform monoculture rows of spruce or pine in its place does not restore the original biodiversity.
2. Monoculture & Non-Native Species: To accelerate timber yield, SCA has extensively planted non-native species, such as North American Lodgepole Pine (Pinus contorta). Ecologists point out that dense, single-species tree plantations lack the structural complexity required to support red-listed (endangered) Swedish wildlife, insects, and fungi.
3. Conflict with Indigenous Sámi Rights: Clear-cutting vast swaths of land disrupts traditional reindeer herding corridors used by the indigenous Sámi people, destroying the ground lichens that reindeer depend on for food during winter.
4. Soil Carbon Loss: While growing trees bind CO2​, clear-cutting disturbs forest soils, releasing centuries of stored soil carbon back into the atmosphere—a factor environmentalists argue corporate carbon accounting often minimizes.

Summary

Does SCA care about the environment?

• As an industrial manager: Yes, in the sense that they view the forest as a renewable resource requiring long-term, sustainable harvesting to maximize timber growth and replace fossil-based materials.
• As a natural ecosystem steward: No, according to conservation scientists. Their business model relies on intensive industrial rotation forestry, which replaces natural, biodiverse ancient ecosystems with commercial timber plantations.