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CityForest Corp., located in Lady-smith, Wis., is a success story that we don't often see in today's turbulent pulp and paper industry. The seven year old company has successfully transformed an old mill that didn't stack up well against larger newer facilities when producing commodity tissue products into a modern tissue mill that is clearly focused on its market. It illustrates that judicious application of capital investment funds, coupled with an innovative approach to management and quality control, can defy the fate that has struck so many other smaller mills in recent years. Instead of closing, the mill is now a major employer and participant in the community, one that can support its employees and provide return to its owners.
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No. 4 machine is a Voith crescent former that can build up to 72-in. diameter rolls of commercial and industrial tissue for the jumbo roll converting market.
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The story started in the early 1990s. The company, a privately held firm founded in 1991, acquired the Ladysmith mill in 1993. The mill had been idle for a year after being shut down by former owner Pope & Talbot. CityForest restarted the facility shortly after acquiring it. But the writing was on the wall as far as its long-term survivability, and in 1995, the company began developing a plan that eventually led to the recent mill upgrade. The consolidation that was sweeping the industry in all sectors in the '90s, including tissue, was one facet that doomed the original mill. High costs and quality constraints owing to its old equipment had also plagued it.
JUMBO ROLL MARKET. However, CityForest identified a niche market-jumbo rolls of commercial and industrial (C&I) tissue used by converters‹that it felt could be well served by a smaller, flexible mill. Other mills may periodically produce jumbo rolls as needed to fill out their order books. However, CityForest is focused on serving the jumbo roll market‹the mill has no converting equipment‹and all efforts go to satisfying these customers. Another major reason that the mill doesn't convert paper into small rolls or sheets of napkins is they don't want to be a competitor to their customers.
Some paper is supplied to larger companies-but most customers are independent converters‹with a significant portion of its business in Wisconsin. Its customer base ranges from Canada to Central America. As part of this strategy, the mill produces smaller runs based on being singularly focused on delivering quality to its customers. This approach‹embraced across the company and encouraged by its organizational structure‹has made the mill the preferred supplier to many accounts.
The mills primary products are bath, towel, and napkin grades. The new machine's primary product has been bath tissue, although it is expected to run more towel as well. The mills product are high brightness, mainly 100% recycled grades that are very soft and not like recycled C&I products made by some other mills. No brown or kraft towel grades are produced. A key here is the extensive fiber processing capabilities of the new deinked pulp plant.
Since the Ladysmith mill does no converting, the customer does any printing or embossing. Here again, quality is a key. Its new deinking equipment, in conjunction with its new tissue machine that has a dust collection system, means the sheet has a low dust carryover due to a low ash content. This is important since dust interferes with the imprinting and leads to quality problems.
MILL UPGRADE STRATEGY. When purchased, the mill operated three older machines using a furnish based on purchased kraft pulp. Mill capacity was 70 tpd.
When running commodity tissue products, and thus competing with the giants of the tissue business, the old mill was saddled with several key disadvantages. It was high cost‹owing to its use of market pulp-and with three small, old machines, quality and productivity were issues as well.
The mill currently operates two tissue machines, an older No. 1 Beloit Yankee fourdrinier and the new No. 4 machine. Two older machines‹No. 2 and No. 3 ‹were shut down when the new machine was brought online. Current mill capacity is 140 tpd on two machines, vs. 70 tpd on three for the old mill.
The first phase of the project was to rebuild the existing No. 1 paper machine and rewinder. This was completed in 1997 and included installation of a new headbox. The rebuild improved sheet formation and rewinding capability and boosted quality. An immediate improvement in quality resulted, and these changes allowed the machine to initiate the company's strategy of moving from commodity products to niche specialty products.
The No. 1 paper machine trims 148 in. and produces 8.5 to 24 lb/3,000 ft2 tissue grades. This includes 1, 2, or 3 ply products. It mainly runs napkin grades and predominantly white grades. A limited amount of colors are run. Ply-bonding and other treatments can be done after the yankee dryer and a winder upgrade done as part of the upgrade to the machine allows it to produce multi-ply sheets.
STATE-OF-THE-ART DEINKING PLANT. In order to reduce costs and produce higher quality products, a more extensive upgrade to the mill was needed. This involved installation of a new 100 tpd state-of-the-art deinking plant and a new No. 4 tissue machine. The deinking plant was brought online in early 1999, followed by startup of the new machine a short time later. Voith Paper (formerly Voith Sulzer) provided the majority of the equipment in the fiber plant and the new machine. An Andritz screw press is used to process fiber. Ahlstrom supplied process pumps.
The furnish consists mainly of sorted office paper (SOP) and coated book grades. The mill continues to use some purchased market pulp for specific custo-mers, but even here, the new machine has allowed the mill to produce a sheet that maximizes quality while controlling cost. "For example, one customer's product continues to use purchased pulp due to customer re-quirements, but the two-layer headbox on the mach-ine allows recycled fiber to be used on the inside with virgin pulp on the outside, providing a cost benefit to the customer," explains Cliff Bienert, v.p., operations.
Furnish is sourced from all over the area, but the mill itself has no recycled fiber collection operations. The deinking plant consists of an extensive system designed to produce high quality pulp for the two tissue mach-ines. The pulp mill has three pulpers, with two pulpers that provide the mill flexibility to blend in other fiber as needed to each machine, such as market pulp or higher or lower quality fiber to meet product specifications.
Wastepaper is fed via conveyor to the third pulper, a 4.5-ton capacity Voith HDC 024 batch pulper that operates at high consistency (16-18%). A Voith Con-taminex pulper detrashing screen with 0.24-in. holes removes large contaminants. This is followed by 12-in. Voith/Bird HD cleaners and a coarse screening system with a Bird STB 200 primary screen (0.55-in. holes) and a Voith Reject Sorter secondary screen. A primary, secondary, and tertiary forward cleaner system follows (all Voith L-5 cleaners). The primary slotted screen is a Voith VPS 30 unit with 0.006-in. slots in a C-bar basket. The secondary and tertiary slotted screens are Voith 10 and Voith 05 units, respectively, having the same basket as the primary screen. Clean pulp is sent to a Voith VAIE Variosplit washer, followed by thickening in an Andritz SCP 753 screw press. Steam and bleaching chemicals are added to the stock and processed in a Voith disperger before going to the high density storage tower.
The tower feeds three Voith CF3C flotation deinking cells. Deinked stock is further processed by a series of fine cleaners, including primary (Voith KS-60), secon-dary, tertiary, and quaternary stages. Stock is thickened by Meri PaperTech elephant filters (disk thickeners).
The No. 4 paper machine is a Voith crescent former design with a Yankee dryer that produces dry crepe tissue. The machine trims 104 in. and produces 9 to 24 lb/3,000 ft2 sanitary tissue grades. Maximum outside roll diameter is 72 in. The grades produced include 1 or 2 ply sheets. Automation and control systems were supplied by General Electric, and the machine has a Honeywell MXOpen quality control system. The process control system is linked to the business information systems, allowing in-depth statistical evaluations to be performed. It also allows machine operators to get data online and make their own decisions about adjustments to improve operations. The machine is running Albany felts and fabrics.
General contractor on the project was Oscar J. Boldt Construction Co., and Dick Engineering was the design engineering firm.
TEAM CONCEPT ORGANIZATION. The new equipment allows the mill to produce a high quality product at lower cost, but company philosophy and its committed workforce are keys to its success, notes Lee Luft, president. "The mill uses a team concept, whereby the workforce is cross trained and able to handle problems with much less of a hierarchy. This means the employees take the initiative to solve problems and focus on quality," notes Luft. The teams are focused on continuous improvement in products and service. "The result has been that many customers prefer CityForest's products over others. While hard to quantify, this obviously means that the mill order books benefit."
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A blend of sorted office paper (SOP) and book grades supply a majority of the secondary fiber used by the Ladysmith mill.
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In addition, notes Bienert, "We are the only mill in the specialty tissue parent roll business with layering capability. This allows us to provide higher quality products and offer cost advantages to the customer."
The CityForest team is composed of hand selected employees, and the result is a dedicated workforce that is focused on its customers and on quality. Mill senior management is very experienced. Vice president Bienert worked for Procter and Gamble for 14 years in tissue manufacturing and joined the mill in 1993. CityForest founder Wayne Gullstad worked for Waldorf Corp. in St. Paul, Minn., prior to founding the company in 1991.
COMPETITIVENESS. Being non-integrated, the mill is susceptible to fluctuations in energy costs since it purchases electrical power and fuel. Energy for the mill is partially provided by an onsite steam generation plant, powered by natural gas. However, the recent rise in electrical rates and gas prices has been partially controlled. For example, the company locked in some contract prices on natural gas long before the recent spike in gas prices, and this forward thinking has really paid dividends. Electrical energy costs in the region are low as well compared to many others. In addition, while energy costs are up, fiber costs at present are off their peak prices of early last year. The tissue industry has responded to the energy problem. Large players have passed on price increases of about 7% that have been rationalized by the rapid rise in energy prices.
The mill also prides itself on being a low environmental impact facility (see Pulp & Paper, September 2000). As part of the overall mill upgrade, the effluent treatment system was upgraded and fresh water use reduced. The mill also has an innovative system for use of its mill byproduct or fiber-clay mix generated from the effluent treatment system. The fiber-clay is land applied and used as a soil conditioner and enhancer. It's also closely involved with environmental efforts in the state of Wisconsin.
Mill History. The mill was originally built in 1902 on the Flambeau River in Ladysmith, Wis. The mill's first products were catalog and newsprint paper. It was retrofitted to produce tissue paper in 1933. Its former owner, Pope & Talbot, shut down the mill in 1992.
CityForest, a private company founded in 1991, originally envisioned the mill as a market deinked pulp facility. However, that approach was discarded owing to the problems facing DIP and other market pulp mills, with the fiber crunch of the 1994-95 period being the final straw.
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