Sappi Fine Paper chooses Interoute to provide global private network

South African paper producer connects paper mills in Europe with offices in South Africa and the United States using Interoute hybrid network model

London on 6 May 2014

Sappi Fine Paper Europe has turned to Interoute to find a private network solution for its large production and small offices sites across the globe. The hybrid network solution from Interoute enables Sappi’s European HQ in Brussels to connect its European paper mills and offices with its sites in South Africa and the United States.

Sappi is one of the world’s largest paper producers, manufacturing 6 million tonnes of paper each year which is used across the world. Its fine paper is used by a variety of industries including printing, publishing and packaging for producing high quality printed magazines, brochures for prestige brands and even packaging for the iPhone.

Interoute’s network plays an essential role in Sappi’s IT infrastructure. The company has eight paper mills running 24×7, located in Belgium, Germany, Finland, the Netherlands and Austria all managed through its centralised IT organisation. To support this model guaranteed uptime and reliability of the network is crucial. Interoute’s hybrid network model connects Sappi Europe’s main production sites to Interoute’s MPLS network while the local sales offices are connected through the Internet. With the move to Interoute’s network Sappi were able to take back and centrally manage some services which they had previously outsourced enabling significant cost savings, without any compromise of service quality.

Dennis de Baar, IT Director at Sappi commented, “Changing network provider can be complex, it is not something you do just like that, it’s a big operation. We chose Interoute, because it is a network provider that does what it promises and is cost effective, the perfect combination for us.”

Jan Louwes Executive Vice President, Enterprise Solutions at Interoute said “Working with Sappi we’ve created an innovative cost effective hybrid network solution which will help Sappi lower its costs and increase productivity and efficiency. Our connectivity services and innovative approach to communications and cloud computing for Sappi were decisive in their choice of Interoute.”

About Sappi

Sappi Fine Paper Europe is Europe’s largest producer of coated graphic paper that is used for high-quality magazines, catalogs, books and high- end print advertising. The headquarters of the company is located in the Belgian capital Brussels. Sappi Fine Paper Europe is known for its innovative quality brands; Magno™, Quattro™, Vantage™, Royal™, Gallery™ and GalerieArt™. Jaz™ is the brand of paper for digital printing. Algro®, Fusion®, Leine and Parade® are brands of lable paper, topliner, packaging paper and board grades. All papers from Sappi Fine Paper Europe are produced in factories with ISO 9001 – ISO 14001 – OHSAS 18001 – and EMAS certification. Sappi is the first paper producer in Europe, the Chain-of – Custody certification for all its European plants and meets the standards of both the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC®, Forest Stewardship Council) and the Program for the Endorsement of Forest Certification (PEFC ™ ; Program Admission of forest certification systems). Sappi Fine Paper Europe is a division of Sappi Limited (JSE), a global company headquartered in Johannesburg, South Africa. The company has a workforce of over 14,000 employees , production facilities in seven countries and three continents , sales offices in 50 countries and customers in more than 100 countries worldwide . More information can be found at Sappi www.sappi.com.

About Interoute

Interoute Communications Ltd is the owner operator of Europe’s largest cloud services platform, which encompasses over 60,000 km of lit fibre, 7 Virtual Data Centres, 11 hosting data centres and 31 collocation centres, with connections to 140 additional third-party data centres across Europe. Its full-service Unified ICT platform serves international enterprises, as well as every major European telecommunications incumbent and the major operators of North America, East and South Asia, governments and universities. These organisations find Interoute the ideal partner for computing, connectivity and communications and developing new services. Its Unified ICT strategy has proved attractive to enterprises looking for a scalable, secure and unconstrained platform on which they can build their voice, video, computing and data services, as well as service providers in need of high capacity international data transit and infrastructure. With established operations throughout mainland Europe, North America and Dubai, Interoute also owns and operates dense city networks throughout Europe’s major business centres www.interoute.com