CORRECTED-Forestry firm Stora Enso to supply Diageo pulp for paper whisky bottles

(Corrects description of material used in bottle lining in 5th
paragraph)

By Essi Lehto

HELSINKI, May 11 (Reuters) - Finnish forestry firm Stora
Enso said on Tuesday it would start supplying pulp
for sustainable packaging company Pulpex, a research and
development venture of British beverage maker Diageo.

Stora Enso and Pulpex will also work together to build a
scalable high speed production line for bottles and other
packages out of pulp fibre in a commercial capacity in 2022, the
companies said in a joint statement.

"The first high-speed line will be a demonstrator to show
whether we can do this on an industrial scale and at the cost
level we are expecting," said Sohrab Kazemahvazi, senior vice-
president of Stora's formed fiber unit.

In addition to Diageo's brands, Pulpex said it was working
with Pepsi, Unilever, GSK and Castrol,
which are committed to together produce 750 million paper
bottles in a year.

The bottles are made by molding the pulp directly into
shape, skipping the step of first making it into a flat board,
Kazemahvazi told Reuters. The bottle is then lined with
food-grade water-based coatings and will still fit into the
paper waste stream, he added.

"We use no PET barrier, and if we use plastic, we want to
keep the bottles recyclable and in case they end up in Nature,
biodegradable," Kazemahvazi said.

The European Union is prioritising recycling of package
materials and limiting plastic use in a plan to halve waste by
2030.

Last July, Diageo said it would test the Pulpex bottle by
launching Johnnie Walker whisky in a paper bottle in 2021.
(Reporting by Essi Lehto; Editing by Clarence Fernandez and
Rashmi Aich)