NEW YORK, July 02, 2025 (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 updated ESG Risk Rating of 16.8 from Sustainalytics. This updated score reflects continued improvement from its 2024 rating of 17.4, underscoring Mercer’s ongoing progress and commitment to ESG risk management.

“This improvement in our ESG Risk Rating reflects the tangible progress we’ve made in managing material sustainability risks across our operations. It underscores our strategy to create long-term value by positioning the Company to support a more sustainable, circular economy,” stated Juan Carlos Bueno, President and CEO of Mercer.

The Sustainalytics ESG Risk Rating assesses a company’s exposure to industry-specific ESG risks and its management of those risks. Ratings are classified across five categories: negligible (under 10), low (10–20), medium (20–30), high (30–40), and severe (40+). Mercer remains in the "low" risk category and now ranks in the top 15th percentile in the global Paper and Forestry industry sector.

In this latest assessment, Mercer achieved a “Strong” management rating across all material ESG issues and maintained “Low” or “Negligible” risk ratings in key areas, including emissions, effluent, waste, land use, biodiversity, occupational health and safety, and corporate governance. These results reflect Mercer’s transparent and increasingly comprehensive sustainability disclosures, as well as its ongoing improvement in environmental performance and commitment to social responsibility.

“Our improved rating reflects tangible progress in how we manage key ESG risks—especially in emissions tracking, permitting, governance, and oversight. These are measurable areas where our teams have elevated performance and consistency across operations,” highlighted Bill Adams, Mercer’s Chief Sustainability Officer.

To learn more about Mercer’s approach to sustainability and risk management, including our latest ESG disclosures and performance data, please visit our website at www.mercerint.com .

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 Rating measures 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 overall ESG risk, i.e., a total unmanaged ESG risk score or the ESG Risk Rating, that is comparable across all industries. Sustainalytics’ ESG Risk Rating provides a quantitative measure of unmanaged ESG risk and distinguishes 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