Stora Port Hawkesbury aims high with world-class SC-A+ machine

Pulp & Paper, Jul 1998 by Ferguson, Kelly H

The Nova Scotia mill and its Swedish parent company invest C$750 million in an effort to tap into North America's lucrative high-end publication papers market

LET THE DIFFERENTIATING BEGIN! With the startup of its super-fast new PM2 at Port Hawkesbury, N.S., Swedish paper giant Stora (now even bigger with the recently announced merger with Finland's Enso Oy-see news story, page 29) has aggressively entered the North American magazine and catalog papers market, giving a major capacity boost to supercalendered (SC) papers and causing some alarm among producers of lightweight coated (LWC) grades.

The new 350,000-mtpy Port Hawkesbury machine, started up in mid-April and supported by a new thermomechanical pulp plant, is designed to produce the highest-end supercalendered papersSC-A and SC-A+. Traditionally used more in European countries, these grades have already found favor at a few U.S. consumer publishing companies and have the benefit of lighter weights and lower cost compared with LWC grades. However, the technical issues of runnability and printability continue to be debated by both sides.

The C$750-million project has brought new life to the mill and to the Nova Scotia community that surrounds it. Prior to the investment by Stora, there was some concern that the company might pull out, leaving a significant hole in the area's industrial base. But the mill is now a major supplier of newsprint and SC papers, obviously giving Stora (soon to be called Stora-Enso) a stronger presence in the U.S. and Canada (see sidebar "Stora races for the top," page 46).

PROJECT HISTORY. The mill, now known as Stora Port Hawkesbury Ltd., was started up in 1962 to produce bleached sulfite market pulp. In 1971, a newsprint line, including a groundwood pulp mill, was added.The newsprint line currently produces about 190,000 mtpy made from a furnish of groundwood and highyield sulfite pulp. The bleached sulfite market pulp operations were shut down during the construction phase of PM2.

The PM2 project was given the goahead by Stora in December 1995. As Jack Hartery, president and general manager of Stora Port Hawkesbury says, the company saw an opportunity in North America for high-end SC papers and decided to move in that direction.

Anders Backlund, project managerSC project, who has extensive experience with European projects, points out that this was designed as a fast-track North American project to try and take advantage of the market growth for SC papers.The project was 23 months from groundbreaking to startup, and only about 18 months from the time the main supplier contracts were signed.

Obviously on a project of this scope, a number of contractors and subcontractors were involved in both design and construction. Backlund says that scheduling played a major role in keeping the project on time and that there were constant meetings to focus on the same goal. We were able to establish a team of all the contractors, vendors, and Stora personnel from a dozen nationalities," he says.

Some of the contractors involved included Andritz Sprout-Bauer, which teamed with engineering consultant Klockner Stadler Hurter and construction contractor Kamyr Enterprises (a subsidiary of Ahlstrom Corp.) for an engineer, procure, construct (EPC) project on the TMP plant; Jaakko Poyry of Finland, which handled detailed engineering of the papermaking process; Strescon Ltd.

(Saint John, N.B.), which manufactured the pre-cast concrete machine building; and Maxim Construction (Dartmouth, N.S.) which received the main civil contract for the machine foundation, concrete floors, interior rooms, roofing, and windows.

Included in the fast-track design was the use of pre-cast concrete for the machine building, which houses both the TMP plant and PM2.Backlund says he has experience with pre-cast concrete machine rooms in Scandinavia, but there are only a few yet in North America.

"There is certainly a difference between using concrete and using steel," Backlund says."With concrete you have to plan your layout according to fixed measurements, whereas steel construction provides more flexibility if designs are not exact. But there are lower maintenance costs with pre-cast concrete, and the speed with which the project moves benefits fast-track engineering."

Groundbreaking at the site was in May 1996 with the first pre-cast concrete columns going up in late July. By December 1996, the machine building (312 m x 120 m) was closed in, and most of the construction and equipment assembly took place in 1997 and early 1998. The TMP plant was commissioned in October 1997, and TMP was being produced and used as a trial in newsprint production by February 1998. The new paper machine was started up on April 15. Currently, there are no plans to switch newsprint production to TMP furnish.

At its peak, about 2,200 construction workers were onsite, with members coming from the Cape Breton Building and Construction Trades Council and other trade unions from Nova Scotia and as far away as Ontario. In total, Backlund estimates the project involved 4 million working hours with no serious accidents, complimenting the mill's safety team for ensuring a safe workplace.