Mill Modernization

The Kirkniemi mill in Finland has spent a lot of time, effort, and money on the Kiri project in an attempt to create a distinctive new brand of paper

Metsä-Serla Keeps Quiet as It Cooks Up New Fine Paper Recipe

BY JIM KENNY, International Editor Like a top chef protecting his best recipe, Henrik Damén makes it quite clear that any attempt to get him to reveal the mix of totally chlorine-free (TCF) kraft and "special" pulp that goes into his paper is totally useless. But considering that his bosses at Metsä-Serla invested some FIM 40 million ($7.4 million) in the development of the new paper grade and added a new 350,000 mtpy paper machine at the Kirkniemi mill in Finland to produce it, his reticence is perhaps less than surprising.

Damén is vice president and mill manager at Kirkniemi and has been involved in the "Kiri" project to develop a new fine paper grade since shortly after its inception in 1993. Today, the mill is seeing the fruits of the long hours it spent developing its new product roll off paper machine No. 3, and the company does not intend to pass on what it has learned just yet.

As Damén explains, "The key is the high-yield aspen pulp that we've developed for use in the mix with kraft pulp. It is a type of pressurized stone groundwood, but it is not really quite that. It definitely is a very specialized process for us, though. The structure of the paper is a bit different from normal as well, so we're not about to give out even the coating weights. In this market, it's all about recipes, and we're not just going to give it away."

Although there is much that Damén will not say about the coating or the "special" pulp and what proportion of the raw material it accounts for, it is known that while the wood currently in use comes from Nordic aspen, the mill is developing plantations based on a cross-breed of Finnish and Canadian aspen. As a result, the mill is very keen to encourage local producers to boost their production of the new, faster growing aspen species for future consumption.

STRATEGIC ADVANCES. The business strategy behind all the effort that Metsä-Serla put into development of the new grade stemmed from a combination of factors. First, there was the strong market growth for coated woodfree grades in general, which is still running at 5% to 6% per year. At the same time, Metsä-Serla's original research pointed to the fact that heatset web offset (HSWO) printing was showing above average demand increases.

HSWO was extending its range downward to relatively short runs traditionally printed in sheet-fed, as well as upward, taking a share of the gravure printing market. Added to that, the proliferation of mini-webs in the printing sector led Metsä-Serla to the conclusion that a low basis weight, high-quality fine paper would provide the perfect solution for HSWO printers, high-quality magazine publishers, and customers using catalogs and flyers in the advertising business.

Since Metsä-Serla already produced coated papers for offset printing, a new double-coated fine paper machine running a basis weight range of 70-115 g/m2 was chosen as the machine that would fill the gap between the magazine grades already produced at Kirkniemi and the triple-coated fine paper from the group's Äänekoski mill. The outline idea, combined with a major marketing exercise and more than 200 pilot trials, culminated in the completion of the Kiri project, with the startup of PM 3 at Kirkniemi on August 15, 1996.

The bulk of the output from the new machine is now being marketed under the Galerie Fine label, and Damén is fairly confident that it will serve a definite need in the market for some time, even with the advent of new printing technologies. "Digital printing might take some business from sheet offset, but not too much from web offset where we are operating," he argues.

But Damén has other reasons for believing that the output from the new machine will flourish in the long term. "PM 3's key advantage is that it has a 20% higher yield. That means 20% more printing surface for the same weight or 20% less paper for the same bulk," he says. "For direct mail business, the yield advantage can mean even more benefits. For example, on a 192-page A4 catalog with a 100,000 copy print run in the U.K., you could save up to 30,000 on the postage costs alone."

While the numbers certainly look attractive, the mill still has a job to do before its customers will be persuaded to look beyond the premium price tag that Metsä-Serla is applying to the grade as a matter of course. Mechanical papers have been made with aspen pulp before, but this is a first for fine papers, according to Damén, and typically the mill is faced with explaining why its kraft/pressurized groundwood (PGW) mix is worth the extra money in a very competitive marketplace.

"I think this is the first time that anyone has tried to diversify products in this area, and buyers are generally quite conservative and only see the higher price," Damén explains. "But the startup here has been very good, and we have had very, very few complaints from our customers so far.

"On the Galerie Fine, we've attracted many of the key players from the printing industry. We've got good references everywhere. In fact, it is only in the U.S. where we are finding it difficult because the paper is a lot lighter and brighter than U.S. paper, so they feel they have nothing to replace it with if it runs out."

• Table 1
• Table 2
• Table 3

TOUGH COMPETITION. Four major fine paper startups (Table 3), adding more than 1.5 million mtpy of capacity, are bound to make any new grade launch an even tougher prospect than usual. Profitability is going to be a major issue for Metsä-Serla as far as the new paper machine at Kirkniemi is concerned. Under current market conditions, utilization rates are likely to stay low for some time.

"In the coated woodfree market you've got very healthy growth, but it's a strange thing that the players in this area can make things so bad," Damén complains. "It seems that when utilization rates get anything close to 90%, everyone just goes crazy and starts adding new machines."

Not only that, but there is also the potential danger that papermakers in southeast Asia will target the woodfree markets in Europe as well. As Damén points out, Asia Pulp & Paper, APRIL (Asia Pacific Resources International) in Indonesia, and Advance Agro in Thailand are all making major capacity additions in this sector and no one yet knows what impact this will have in the markets the Kiri project was set up to serve.

This is an area where most industry commentators do agree-that almost everyone in Europe is now trying to set up deals with southeast Asian players.

But it is not all doom and gloom at Kirkniemi. Damén believes that the mill has several factors in its favor:

At 700,000 mtpy, Kirkniemi is now one of the largest woodfree sites in the world, and there are many economies of scale which come with its size.

The potential for basis weight savings with the new paper offers significant commercial advantages.

By concentrating on reel production at the lighter basis weight end of the fine paper range, Kirkniemi hopes to avoid the worst of the market competition from the likes of Nordland and Gratkorn.

The mill now boasts a new boiler, and it is well-placed to meet the environmental challenges of the future.

The aspen used in the raw materials mix enhances the bleaching characteristics of the paper.

ON A HAPPIER NOTE. While the markets might not look too good for the moment, at least Metsä-Serla is happy with the performance of the new machine. Metsä-Serla worked closely with the machine supplier, Valmet, to come up with a machine that would meet the targets for output, reliability, and runability that the mill had set. The startup curve has been excellent, according to Metsä-Serla, and PM 3 is already operating at more than 80% of capacity.

Although the paper machine represents the major part of the expenditure, the Kiri project also involved the installation of new wood handling and effluent treatment equipment, as well as the "special" pulp mill and the power plant. The wood handling area uses a 22-m-long dry drum debarker with a dia of 4 m and a capacity of 60 km3/hour, while the pulp mill comprises six pressurized groundwood grinders (450 mtpd capacity) and high-consistency TCF bleaching.

The paper machine has a wire width of 9 m and a design speed of 1,500 m/min, although it is currently running at 1,350 m/min. Valmet's SymFlo headbox and SpeedFormer form the business end of the wet end, and the mill is running a neutral process. As Damén explains, "At the time, this was the first vertical gap former for fine paper, but there are now a few of them around."

At one point, the mill did look at a shoe press for the press section, but decided that the technology was not advanced enough at the time to take the risk of too many breaks. As a result, the mill is running a slightly more conventional system.

According to Valmet, the press section setup consists of a Valmet SymPress II system with a heated center roll and without a fourth press, in this case, to help boost reliability and runnability characteristics on the new paper machine. Web transfer from the wet end to the dryer section is via PressRun boxes and the wet end is a single fabric SymRun with no inverted dryer groups.

The mill appears happy with the web dryness after the press section without a fourth press, but it has left enough room to add one at a later date if needed.

Valmet is also keen to point out that the machine's two-roll calender features a deflection-compensated, zone-controlled Sym-CDS roll in the bottom position and a thermo roll in the top position. An OptiReel from Valmet has also been installed on the line.

The offline coater has a web width of 8.44 m and is designed to run at 1,800 m/min. In January, just four months after startup, it set a new world speed record of 1,750 m/min, and the mill hopes to push that even higher in the near future, but at the moment it is operating at 1,500 m/min.

According to the layout supplied by Valmet, the unit has two SymCoat coating heads for precoating and two OptiCoat Jet coating heads for final top coating. "There were originally some problems with air bubbles and so on which slowed us down, but it's working fine now," Damén explains.

The coater uses infrared drying from Solaronics in combination with an airflow dryer and five cylinders. The setup outlined in Valmet's drawings shows gas-heated IR dryers (both straight and profiling) after each coating station and gas-heated air dryers after each coating section. The coating unit also boasts an OptiReel and a CoatMatic automation system, while the coating color kitchen comes courtesy of Valmet-Raisio. Ground calcium carbonate (GCC) from Omya forms the basis of the coating.

Most of the production from PM 3 is supercalendered (SC), and the mill has two 12-roll units in operation to accommodate the production volumes. Valmet has also supplied a soft calender which is used to produce the "Silk" range of the Galerie output from the mill.

Valmet adds that it also supplied the two JR 1000 single-drum winders and a JR 300 salvage winder from where the production line moves through to the packaging and wrapping line. Online automation includes Pulp Expert, WIC, ABB Accuray and Ulma systems, as well as a Sensodec predictive maintenance and condition monitoring tool.

PLAYING TO THE GALERIE. The mill is still producing medium weight coated grades for the moment as it attempts to bring Galerie Fine to the market in stages. At full production, the new PM 3 will undoubtedly be one of the most efficient machines around in the sector when it is optimized, but for Damén and Metsä-Serla there is still the question of making money. Price increases appear to be slowly creeping through for the moment, but margins in the medium term, if they exist at all, will be tight.

As Damén explains, "With the scenario we see for woodfree growth in Europe, there should be a strong level of strengthening in the market, and we hope to make the most of that. But obviously, if it gets too good, someone else is bound to add some more new capacity."

It appears as though there will have to be many structural changes in the sector before Metsä-Serla gets to reap the benefit of its investment.