PPI (PULP & PAPER INTERNATIONAL) MAGAZINE: Matching quality with flexibility

Borregaard ChemCell finds a niche within specialty cellulose

June 2007
By Justin Toland, Editor

Think of pulp and your next thought will probably be: paper. But take a look around and you'll see a whole host of everyday items in which cellulose is a key ingredient, from toothpaste to spectacle frames, medicines to paint, viscose clothing to food. As sales director, Borregaard ChemCell, Lars Lervik, puts it: "The big market [for pulp] is paper, but we think this is more sexy. With paper pulp you only have one product - we have lots of products."

Borregaard, part of the Orkla Group, the biggest privately owned company in Norway, is Europe's leading producer of specialty cellulose and a market leader globally in selected applications. Borregaard employs 1,800 people in 21 countries and has annual sales of Euro 575 million ($830 million). Some Euro 400 million of that comes from the firm's Specialty Chemicals division, which, in addition to the specialty pulp business, Borregaard ChemCell, also includes Borregaard LignoTech, the world's largest (and only global) supplier of lignin-based products (see sidebar). Sales from the two business areas are roughly equal.

Borregaard ChemCell operates two mills, at Sarpsborg in Norway and Solothurn in Switzerland, with a combined capacity of 280,000 tonnes/yr of pulp. The vast majority is used in a range of different everyday goods, only minor volumes go to the paper industry.

"Borregaard's specialty cellulose business has two core markets: cellulose ethers and cellulose acetates", says VP, communications and public affairs, Dag Arthur Aasbø. Construction, coating, food and pharmaceuticals are among the end uses.

Borregaard's aim is to find'a niche within a niche' and avoid the threat of commoditization. "A specialized or new product is often a commodity within a few years," notes Aasbø. Within specialty cellulose there are several niche markets and some are more demanding and have more complex qualification processes than others.

Borregaard ChemCell's Sarpsborg mill in Norway produces some 160,000 tonnes/yr of specialty cellulose

One step ahead

Borregaard is investing heavily in R&D to stay ahead of the competition. In 2006, products launched within the previous five years accounted for 21% of sales of specialty cellulose and 28% of lignin products. "We want to increase these figures and we will," says Lervik.

To this end, the firm's R&D departments were merged into one in 2004 and closer ties developed with other disciplines. "We are absolutely dependent on the commercial guys facing the market," says R&D manager, Hans Henrik Øvrebrø. "Production also has to be involved."

Executive VP, Borregaard ChemCell, Tom-Erik Foss-Jacobsen has noticed the difference: "In the last three years we have had much closer cooperation between R&D and the commercial teams. There is hardly a management meeting where innovation is not on the agenda."

Today, Borregaaard's cross-functional R&D division comprises 48 people. However, as technical service manager, Borregaard ChemCell, Ove Bartholsen points out, "There are many more than 50 people involved in R&D."

Since 2004, the percentage of researchers working in R&D has risen from 30% to 56%, a sign of the company's commitment to developing new applications.

"We are currently working on a new application for cellulose in our pilot plant," says Bartholsen. "You will hear more soon," promises Foss-Erikson. "We are aiming for commercial volumes in 2008."

Making it special

The key differences between a specialty cellulose plant and a standard paper pulp mill revolve around flexibility and quality control. At Sarpsborg, Borregaard is able to monitor and modify parameters at all stages of the process -- woodyard, digester house, bleach plant, drying and packaging, explains plant manager, Espen Hall. "Flexibility in all these steps makes a difference," believes Foss-Jacobsen.

The woodyard and debarking setup is "pretty standard" says Hall, "But we don't always run the same recipe. We have the flexibility to change." This includes the ability to use different qualities of roundwood and purchased sawmill chips. Sarpsborg and Solothurn are both sulfite spruce mills, but for some products in the Swiss mill beech fiber is used.

"We operate the digester house in a special way," highlights Hall. "We can adjust the cooking acid: this is a very important parameter." Another unusual feature of this plant, which uses a batch digestion process, is its ripening silos for pre-treating the woodchips.

In the bleach plant, a single campaign can last from one day to one week, with brightness levels of the pulp as high as 95 ISO. "This is one of our strengths, says Hall. "We are able to produce in a high viscosity range and are able to change qualities rapidly."

Bartholsen points out that Borregaard has to take account of a wide range of individual customer specifications in each mill. Specifications are managed in SAP, and each batch is automatically controlled using the system.

A new Honeywell DCS has just been added to the digester house and it will be extended to cover the bleach plant by the end of 2007. This is just one of three key support systems, along with an OsiSoft PI Processmap and a MICON system for logging and analyzing finished materials. "I don't think we could have the portfolio we have today without these support systems," believes Hall.

The drying machine too, differs somewhat from the set-up in a standard paper pulp facility, enabling fast changes to grammage and density. "Our customers have special wishes for grammage, density and dryness," explains Bartholsen. "If you have variable amounts of water, when you add pulp into a reactor with reagents you can have unwanted reactions."

Jumbo rolls of pulp (weighing up to 21 tonnes!) are held in an intermediate storage area while samples are sent for testing in the lab. Last year more than 52,000 analyses were carried out in the laboratories at Sarpsborg.

The large jumbo roll storage capacity makes it possible to await packing and quality decisions until all analyses are available. "Not many mills have the philosophy of having the final analysis before packaging," asserts Bartholsen.

The final area in which Borregard's mills differ from the norm is packaging and delivery. "Our customers mostly want rolls, not bales, in different diameters and widths," explains Hall. "We need to be flexible in our delivery form."

This extends to whether or not the pulp is wrapped. "It depends on the customer's preference," notes Bartholsen. "Generally, pulp for food, pharma and cosmetics uses is wrapped."

Sarpsborg can keep 15,000 tonnes of pulp in storage. Delivery is by truck, rail or ship (a harbor is located next to the specialty cellulose plant). The mill's total output is some 160,000 tonnes/yr (the precise figure depends on the product mix). The plant is powered in equal measures by oil, hydropower and energy from waste incineration.

"We have two of the most well invested plants in the [specialty cellulose] industry," says Bartholsen (see sidebar). At Sarpsborg, two new Metso Twin Roll wash presses were added to the bleach plant during a scheduled maintenance shut in April (new washing equipment had been installed in the digester plant last August. The capacity of the evaporation plant was raised at the same time). The latest break also allowed the installation of new buffers between the digester house and bleaching. The aim is to allow the mill to reduce maintenance costs by allowing its own crews to work in the digester house one day and the bleach plant the next. "We are focusing on preventive maintenance," explains Hall. "In the last five years we have reduced maintenance costs and increased uptime."

Running the facility is a real art, adds Hall, with the bleach plant requiring particular expertise: "It is one of Borregaard's most difficult plants to operate. We have to have highly skilled operators." Teamwork is also essential, not just within the cellulose plant, but across the whole site (ethanol plant, lignin plant, water treatment, and so on).

Many of the site's supervisors and operators have been through training courses at the Orkla Competence Center next door. (Sarpsborg is also the site of the Borregaard head office).

Ove Bartholsen, Tom-Erik Foss-Jacobsen and Espen Hall surrounded by the enormous jumbo rolls of pulp

A substitute for oil

Borregard's aim, says Aasbø, is to deliver "wood based chemicals" in an integrated concept. From 1,000 kg of wood (or one tree), the company derives 400 kg of specialty cellulose, 400 kg of lignin, 50 kg of ethanol (for use in paint/varnish, car care products and pharmaceuticals), 20 kg of yeast (for food and feed -- only produced in Switzerland) and 3 kg of vanillin (only produced in Norway: it is used in ice cream and other foodstuffs, perfumes and pharmaceuticals. Borregaard is the only company in the world to produce this aroma chemical from wood). "About 90% of the compounds in wood end up in commercial production," comments Aasbø.

"The paper pulp industry is normally focused on testing mechanical properties (tensile, tear, and so on)," comments Bartholsen. "We are first of all interested in the chemical composition of our product and how it performs in the different chemical processes of our customers. While paper producers analyse the fiber distribution, we analyse the molecular weight distribution."

Borregaard also conducts x-ray analysis of metals content, and it has pioneered a number of testing procedures where existing standards were not sophisticated enough for the demands of the specialty cellulose market.

Some 170 process and product tests are performed every day, while special analyses are conducted each quarter to ensure Borregaard's products can continue to be used in the food, cosmetics and pharmaceutical sectors.

"Even though pulp manufacturing requirements are not as strict as in the pharmaceutical industry, our integrated wood-based chemicals concept gains synergies from our pharma business [Borregaard Synthesis]," says Bartholsen.

"Specialty cellulose is a performance chemical," believes Aasbø. Or, in the words of Øvrebrø, "It's both a molecule and a fiber that can give added value to an existing application, or help develop new applications."

"Most of [Borregaard's] products can substitute oil-based products in one way or another," says Aasbø. "This makes our offering very interesting today from an environmental point of view, an energy point of view and a political point of view," he concludes.

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