SCA’s mill in Laakirchen invests SEK 95 million ($16 million) to increase the percentage of recycled fibre

Apr 10, 2008. /Lesprom.com/. SCA’s graphic paper mill in Laakirchen invests SEK 95 million ($16 million) to increase the percentage of recycled fibre in its products. The aim is to reduce the energy consumption, the use of pulp-wood raw material and the carbon dioxide emissions – without compromising the high quality of the products. “We have successfully launched a paper grade, GraphoVerde, with high content of de-inked pulp, says Mark Lunabba, mill manager at SCA Laakirchen in Austria. “As a result of the favourable demand for this paper and our positive experiences of using a high proportion of recovered paper, we now need to increase our capacity for de-inked pulp.” “Being able at the same time to reduce our consumption of energy and wood, which have both increased sharply in price, is not a disadvantage in this respect,” explains Lunabba. The investment will increase the capacity of the Laakirchen mill’s deinking plant, in which ink and other contaminants are removed from the recovered paper, comprising newspapers and magazines from Austria and southern Germany. It will increase the capacity of the mill’s de-inking plant from today’s level of 145,000 tons to 175,000 tons per year and a new facility will be ready for start-up mid 2009. Mechanical wood-pulp originates from wood raw materials that have had a 30-50 percent price increase recently, and the production operations for this kind of pulp are highly energy intensive. Two-thirds of the electrical power that the Laakirchen mill consumes is produced by the mill itself in a gas-driven power plant. The remaining one-third that is purchased on the market is however very high and therefore the annual energy savings from replacing part of the pulp with recycled fibres is estimated to around Euro 1 million. SCA acquired Laakirchen mill from the Heinzel family in 1988 and today it employs approximately 580 people. The mill has 505,000 tons of annual production of super calendared (SC) publication paper, mainly used for catalogue magazines and advertising material.