G-P aims for high yield

RECOVERED PAPER

Eyeing efficiency improvements, Georgia-Pacific (G-P) plans to spend almost $100 million on projects at tissue mills in Green Bay (the Broadway Street operation in Wisconsin) and Halsey, OR, the company said.

G-P will spend $50 million at the recycled-content 407,000 tons/yr Broadway mill for a deinking line that replaces an old one, and provides better cleaning equipment and fiber yield for what has become a major issue for recycled-content tissue makers in the US. Another $48 million will be spent at Halsey for new converting equipment and for replacing some older converting equipment, and for erecting a 60,000-ft2 building. The building and converting upgrades at Halsey are set to be in by the end of the year.

A company official would not say if the project increases converting capacity at Halsey. The mill's converting line capacity was 201,100 tons/yr in 2004. The Halsey mill, a former James River and Fort James complex, runs "a good, solid converting operation," the company official said, and the improvements will "make that (operation) even more efficient." The two-machine mill's tissue paper capacity is 107,000 tons/yr.

At Broadway, the new fiber line should run in first quarter 2009, and the project focuses on increasing yield from recovered paper. Recycled-content tissue makers in North America are struggling with declining quality for office paper, their main furnish, since the escalation of shredders began in 2000.

Five years ago, the average recycled-content tissue mill yield in North America was 65-72%. Today, it's 60-66%, contacts said. It now takes at least 320,000 tons of recovered paper to produce about 200,000 tons of tissue paper. For Broadway, the G-P officiai succinctly said the purpose was to get "more out of the fiber" from the new line.

"Upgrading cleaning systems is part of a mill's long term strategy to lower costs and maintain competitiveness," said one contact. "As the fiber supply continues to have more contaminants and lower yields, as time goes on, mills will have to improve cleaning to simply keep up.

"Regarding the benefits, if G-P can improve yield by 1%, that means they could get an extra ton of finished paper for every 100 tons of fiber they consume. They also have a ton less to dispose of."

"Higher yield means higher profit which would be especially significant with the current prices" for US recovered paper at their highest marks since 1995, said a major supplier. Along with G-P at Broadway, SCA Tissue will install a new drum pulper at its Menasha, WI, tissue mill to use lower grades of recovered paper. Deinked market pulp producer SFK Pulp plans an "alternative" fiber line this year at the Fairmont, WV mill for greater flexibility on furnish. Yields declined because less office paper is sorted today.

Two qualities of office paper are used in US mills: a No. 1 that is sorted and the highest quality, and a lower quality No. 2 from shredders that is mixed with various paper types. About 70% of the office paper used at mills is the No. 2. Ten years ago, shredded office paper was non-existent at US and Canadian tissue mills.

Also, a growing amount of US shredded office paper, an estimated 80,000 tons in 2007 or 6% of US mill consumption, is shipped to China, where the cost to sort the office paper is much lower than in North America, contacts said.

Copyright Paperloop, Inc. Apr 2008
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