Marco Eikelenboom, President and CEO of Sappi Europe, succeeds Ilkka Hämälä, CEO of Finnish paper manufacturer Metsä Group, as President of the Confederation of European Paper Industries (Cepi) in January 2024.
Marco Eikelenboom, a Dutch national, has held a number of strategic positions within the South African paper group Sappi since 1997: Managing Director of Sappi Benelux in 1998, Marketing Director of Sappi Southern Africa's Fine Paper Division in 2002, then back to Europe two years later to take over as Marketing and Sales Director of Sappi Europe's Graphic Papers Division, then Vice President of the same Division in 2009. The 1 er on April 2021, he becomes Chairman and CEO of Sappi Europe in Brussels.
This two-year appointment to the presidency of Cepi comes at the height of the European pre-election period. At the beginning of June, elections to the European Parliament will be held, followed six months later by the election of the President of the European Commission. Over the next five years, the parliamentarians and the new college of European Commissioners will have the task of implementing all the measures committed to in the 2019 Green Pact for Europe, in which the European Union and its member states pledged to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by at least 55% by 2030, compared with 1990 levels.
Last autumn, Ilkka Hämälä, Cepi's outgoing president, actively contributed to the launch of Circular Choices, a green growth coalition to "cultivating a circular future and "making circular choices for a competitive european bioeconomy" reads the Cepi website.
To date, the details of Marco Eikelenboom's duties within Cepi are not known, but the task of continuing the Circular Choices initiative seems obvious in the current context.
