By Martin Koepenick, Innova, Atlanta
BRUSSELS,
Feb. 28, 2009
(Viewpoint) -
What’s the winning formula for coated art paper made at Gold East (APP)? Quality products, large-scale sustainable production, widespread distribution, and low cost are the pillars of its success.
As with many modern global corporations, this combination is the rule for building and maintaining a leadership position.
What is striking, however, about the Gold East mill in Dagang is that it has channeled more than $2 billion dollars to one location in China in just a decade. While well situated on the Yangtze River, and not far from Shanghai, the mill is not surrounded by massive plantations, or close to a pulp mill. APP has been aggressively developing fast growing trees in the south of China, but that factor was not in place when the mill was launched.
So why dagang?
The first point is that the mill is in China, a growing market that still imports art paper grades. Dagang has good shipping options for distribution within China, or exported to destinations around the globe from ports along the country’s southeastern coast.
In any case the location continues to get better from a market standpoint, as coated fine paper production has grown enough for the mill to sell 60% of its output to domestic markets. The remaining 800,000 tonnes/yr, not a trivial amount, finds a home primarily in North America, Europe and Asia.
The mill’s three paper machines rival each other for setting new speed records. Going to the risiinfo.com, Voith Paper and/or Metso websites, shows many in-depth articles and news releases. Voith and Metso proudly write about Gold East in their own publications, too, and continue to release news about speed records and rising quality.
As for another kind of high performance, flipping through a fashion or photography magazine at Gold East’s headquarters display allows one to see the company’s products at its most “chic” and “fast company” level.
The brand names, Space Shuttle, Nevia and SunBrite, are catchy, and are becoming known by major printers and publishers.
What a gold east paper tour reveals
When one enters the Gold East Paper headquarters, what is most evident is pride in professional presentation of the mill’s accomplishments, and throughout all of APP, the principal shareholder. The feeling is more like a modern urban hotel. Next to a plush room for a big screen presentation of the company, there is a large museum-style display area of the Gold East Paper and APP operations globally, as well as a representation of its products.
Compared with mills around the world, ranging from tired 100-year-old antiques, still operating because of willpower and ingenuity, to shining stars in Scandinavia, and pulp facilities like Veracel in Brazil, Gold East Paper is second to none.
From the backlit images of APP-owned forests in Indonesia to visuals and description of the huge paper machines, a wide array of magazines are on display, such as top photographic titles, revealing the level of accomplishment for Gold East grades.
The point of this is not glorification of Gold East and its management. It’s simply a statement of fact, which recognizes the company’s attitude toward paper products. There are no apologies for being part of a dull industry, or running a massive industrial facility.
The tour’s showpiece is, of course, the paper machines. Walking into the papermaking area, the feel is more of a spectator’s view of a racetrack, walking alongside an amazing, fast, continuous event, where paper production speeds of 1,700 m/min are normal.
Speed is not everything in papermaking, but when breaks are at a minimum, and operations run very smoothly every day of every year, it’s something to take note of.
After the walkthrough beside the machines and in control rooms, the tour continues alongside the power plant and onto the waste treatment facility.
What’s impressive at this point is rather odd. There are gardens planted everywhere in areas which are normally dominated by grey metal, pipes and access roads. The route leads to an Eco-Garden and Eco-Zoo, where wastewater is used to create a small water park. A pagoda is at the center.
Instead of thinking about the huge circulating fluidized boilers and electrostatic precipitators dominating the view, the focus is on the ducks, or bright orange carp, the residents of this area.
Just after viewing an array of birds and native animals at the small zoo, the tour bus continues to the Yangtze River, the paper rolls are loaded onto specially designed ships ready for international travel. Or they are transported by truck to domestic markets.
Stopping for a moment along the Yangtze, Gold East Paper Dagang vice president director, Chih-Ming Ma adds, “Our standards for sustainable development are designed to match or exceed regulations and expectations from any region of the world. We only use ECF and TCF pulp, and we continue to invest in water and air pollution abatement.
Ma also notes that the water going back to the Yangtze River is cleaner than when the mill takes it in. “Our environmental team is very proud of the fact that we continue to set a standard for China in terms of minimum water usage, as well.
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Two billion seems to be the magic number at Gold East Paper, Dagang, Zhenjiang city, Jiangsu province China, as it now exceeds that in dollars investment over the past 10 years. At 2,000,000 tonne/yr, it is the world’s largest coated fine paper mill. The three paper machines are a showcase for Voith, and also important for Metso in terms of innovations in coating. The latest machine, PM 3, has a design speed of 2,000 m/min, a wire width of 10.6 m and a trim width of 9.77 m. And unlike the mill’s PM 1 and PM 2, it also features an online coater. In terms of advanced chemistry, Eka Chemicals provides its CompozilR Fx silica nanoparticle-based retention system, which was invented in China to help super fast machines run smoothly with higher filler levels. This is significant because of stability of machine performance with fewer breaks, as well as enhanced sheet qualities with lower fiber content.
For the fifth time, Gold East Paper has broken its own world speed record on PM 3, recently averaging 1,770 m/min for double-coated paper at a basis weight of 90 g/m² over a period of 29 hours. In terms of electricity, PM 3 has largest installed power base of any paper machine, 120 MW (See Gold East Fulfills Its Ambitions, PPI, April 2006 by Graeme Rodden). Located beside a major Yangtze River port, Zhenjiang, not far from the Beijing-Hangzhou Grand Canal, Gold East Paper’s facilities cover an area of 5.3 km².
As part of the Sinar Mas Group APP China, it follows the management principles of sustainable development, represented by the large investment in environmental equipment, as well as the community focus on local infrastructure and education.
Its recent investment of $130 million into what it calls “facilities for environmental renovation” includes circulating fluidized bed boilers, high efficiency electrostatic precipitators, a precipitated calcium carbonate plant, save-all water recycling systems, an Eco-Garden, and an Eco-Zoo.
Gold East Paper has received honors in China such as Green Enterprise of Jiangsu Province in 2000. In addition to recognition for Top 100 National Environment-Friendly Quality Projects in 2003, it also won the highest national award for environmental protection, the National Environment-Friendly Enterprise in 2004. On a continuous basis, Gold East is seeking ways to further reduce water consumption. In 2007 it was granted the PEFC chain of custody certificate.
It has introduced 6 Sigma and CTR to greatly increase its operating efficiency. It has also received certification by ISO9002 quality management system, ISO14001 environment management system and OHSAS18001 occupation health and safety management system. |
Now what?
So, where does Gold East go from here? Could someone else challenge its high value/lower cost producer leadership?
Ma says, ”We must innovate to stay ahead, across the entire supply chain, and continue to motivate our people.
“Whatever is possible in the way of papermaking advances, we are ready to try them. We have raised mineral content with the help of a new retention system, while maintaining desired formation. That’s not easy to do on such fast machines.
“We utilize information technology in a new way to manage inventory, saving in other raw materials costs.
“In terms of marketing we want to demonstrate our commitment to existing customers and prospects at trade shows (like DRUPA) in Europe, and through the satisfaction of customers, using our fine paper in prestigious magazines.”
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Though China has improved its pulp consumption structure, wood remains a low proportion accounting for 20% of total pulp raw material, one third of the average of developed countries. Pulp manufacturers in China are mostly of a small scale with an average annual output of 60,000 tonnes, compared with 180,000 tonnes on average in developed countries. With low-tech equipment and short supply, paper production was dependent on pulp imports.
The 10th Five-Year Plan and 2010 Special Plan point out that it is necessary to increase the pulp self-supply rate in China from 6% at present to 20% by 2010.
APP’s forest-pulp-paper integration aims to help the nation change the negative pulp supply situation. |
Martin Koepenick, Innova, Atlanta, GA, has written about innovations in papermaking for more than 25 years.
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