UPM gives 40,000 face masks to students

The Finnish forestry company UPM has given 40,000 face masks to Finnish universities as part of the company’s Biofore Share and Care programme, said UPM in a press release on Wednesday.

The masks will be handed to the students in the Faculty of Agriculture and Forestry at the University of Helsinki, the School of Chemical Engineering at Aalto University, the Faculty of Science and Engineering at Åbo Akademi University and Chemical Engineering students at Lappeenranta University of Technology.

“We support our stakeholders in making their everyday life during the Covid-19 pandemic as safe as possible. Students are important to us and interaction is a significant part of studies. The masks have been in short supply as the need for face masks in different fields has increased. Therefore, we have delivered 500,000 surgical face masks to our key stakeholders all around the world. The safety of face-to-face courses is important to students who are beginning their studies or taking laboratory courses, for example. That’s where the masks come in handy,” said Pirkko Harrela, Executive Vice President, Stakeholder Relations at UPM.

“We are truly delighted by the support UPM has given us and offer our sincere thanks,” Ritva Toivonen, Dean of the Faculty of Agriculture and Forestry at the University of Helsinki said, adding, “Our faculty provides courses that involve laboratory work and field work in forests and bogs, and on fields. They are essential to learning and cannot be replaced by e-learning. We try to ensure that the necessary face-to-face learning and research work are also carried out safely in these exceptional circumstances. Therefore, we use some 160 face masks daily.”