[6] In 2015, Stora Enso was ranked seventh in the world by sales and fourth by earnings, among forest, paper and packaging industry companies.

A 1997 article in Harvard Business Review praised Stora's ability to adapt to changing circumstances over the centuries.

[22][23] In the same year, Stora Enso and AssiDomän formed a joint company, Billerud AB, to produce packaging paper.

In 2002, Stora Enso started investigating the possibility of establishing plantations and production facilities in Guangxi, China.

[26][27][28] In 2009, Stora Enso entered into a joint venture in Uruguay, called Montes del Plata, with access to 250,000 hectares of woodland and the intention to build a large-capacity mill.

In 2015, the Financial Times and Bloomberg News reported that Stora Enso was investing in biomaterials and renewable construction products as possible future growth areas.

[40] In July 2017, the Financial Times reiterated that a focus on renewable packaging, biomaterials and construction products formed part of the strategic direction of Stora Enso, while also reporting that the revenue from paper had decreased further to 30 per cent of the total sales.

[41] In 2018, Stora Enso, along with 23 other Finnish and Swedish companies, formed a joint venture named Combient for research and knowledge sharing in the areas of artificial intelligence, deep learning, big data and automation.

It included[58] In July 2021, Stora Enso informed that it was selling its RFID tag technology called ECO[59] to Grupo CCRR.

[60] In March 2022, Stora Enso announced its intention to sell four paper mills located in Anjala in Finland, Hylte and Nymölla in Sweden and Maxau in Germany.

[58] In 2021, the sales figures and relative contributions to group earnings by divisions were:[5] Stora Enso has the majority of its operations in Europe.

[5] In Uruguay, Stora Enso (50 percent ownership) and Celulosa Arauco y Constitución operate the Montes del Plata joint venture.

[70] The North American part of the group was sold in 2007 to NewPage Corporation with a net loss of about 4.12 billion dollars.

[clarification needed] According to a Swedish television documentary, there have been accusations that to cover the loss, the accounting was manipulated, which was revealed in 2010.

[72] In 2013, Stora Enso published a report written by independent law firms, which the company had commissioned to investigate the accusations.

[75][76] Eucalyptus cultivation by Stora Enso has been discussed critically,[77] especially in relation to the 2011 documentary film Red Forest Hotel.

[81] The Swedish program Kalla fakta reported in 2014 that Stora Enso used child labor in its activities in Pakistan, and that the company had been aware of it since 2012.

[82] In response, the company denied that child labor existed directly in the operations of its joint venture partner in Pakistan, but admitted that it was present in its supplier networks.

The cooling tower had an aerobic count of over 1,000,000, about ten times the urgent action limit of 100,000 micro-organisms per mL at 30 °C[84][85] In August 2024, logging machines belonging to Stora Enso drove over a critical habitat for freshwater pearl mussels, protected by Finnish environmental laws, at Hukkajoki River in Suomussalmi, Finland.

[86] The Police is investigating the case as a severe environmental crime, and the Finnish Minister of Climate and the Environment Kai Mykkänen demanded Stora Enso to take full responsibility and to cover the caused damage and the whole Finnish forest industry to act more to protect the environment.

[88] In April 2015, Stora Enso entered into a partnership with ILO, with the aims of progressively eliminating child labor from the supply chain in Pakistan and promoting decent work conditions.

[90] In 2016, Stora Enso qualified for inclusion on the "Climate A list" of the CDP environmental organization, a status awarded to 193 of 1,839 companies sampled.

The company provided the games with items made of renewable materials, including two spectator shelters built from cross laminated timber elements, which were subsequently donated to the host city.