Volume 06, Number 1
Jun 1993

News

Champion Funds Purchase of Decorated Paper Collection

The Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, DC, recently acquired the Laura and Valerian Lada-Mocarski collection of historical decorated papers. The Library is planning to research the collection, catalog it, and eventually exhibit it. Funds for the purchase were donated by Champion International. (From the April Guild of Book Workers Newsletter)

Straw into Gold: Old Boxes and Newspapers into Fine Papers

• Necessity was the mother of invention for Domtar, Inc., a Canadian pulp and paper company based in Montreal. Like other Canadian paper companies, it lost money for the last three years. There was more money in recycled paper, but office papers are hard to deink, and good office waste paper is hard to find anyhow in sparsely-populated Canada.
  Normally, recycled paper is made from waste papers of the same or a superior grade-i.e., office waste paper can go back into office paper, or into tissue, but tissue can't go into office paper. Now, that may be changing.
  Domtar recently patented a process for converting old corrugated containers into recycled bleached kraft pulp for fine papers, used for printing and writing. It will be installed at two Domtar mills, starting with the Cornwall, Ontario mill late 1994 or early 1995. The pulp will have superior strength because of the long softwood fibers, and will require minimal deinking, though paper made from it will have brightness levels of 87, which is pretty bright. The story in Recycled Paper News for April does not say what the effect on permanence will be.
• Hammermill Papers just introduced Unity DP Paper, the first office paper made entirely of recycled newspapers and magazines. Hammermill's new deinking and repulsing plant in Lock Haven, Pennsylvania uses a process developed by Steinbeis Temming Papier GmbH. The paper is not very bright but it is quite opaque

Paper Business News

• The International Papermaker (a sibling of American Papermaker) for November reported that the Canadian forest products industry (which includes the pulp and paper industry) is in serious trouble and needs a massive overhaul to survive. In 1991 it lost a total of $2.5 billion, which is about as much as it made only two years previously. Old and inefficient machines and mills, and restrictive labor practices, were blamed for the situation.
• Canadian Pacific Forest Products Ltd. shut down its newsprint mill at Thunder Bay in April until further notice, following the union's rejection of a cost-cutting agreement that would have increased work-rule flexibility. Market conditions were also blamed. The company has already shut down one pulp mill and reduced output at another. It will sell a mill in Quebec, but so far the company's only fine paper mill, in Dryden, Ontario, seems to be surviving.
• In this country, Wausau Paper Mills, the company that recently bought James River's alkaline null at Groveton, NH, is doing fine. It made money in both 1992 and 1993, and is carrying out a multimillion-dollar expansion of its Rhinelander mill in Wisconsin.
• The 1991 and 1992 sales and earnings of thirty American paper companies are reported in the American Papermaker, April 1993 on p. 17. All but one of the eight largest fine paper manufacturers in that list make at least some alkaline paper, and one of them (Weyerhaeuser) makes all its fine paper alkaline. Weyerhaeuser's 1992 earnings placed it far ahead of its nearest competitor. The eight companies are Boise Cascade, Champion, Georgia-Pacific, International Paper, James River, Kimberly-Clark, Mead and Weyerhaeuser. Kimberly-Clark is the only one without an alkaline mill.

Standard Matters

• The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has a Metric Transition Plan which calls for it to use the International System of Units (SI, or metric) in all publications. This means no feet or pounds, of course. It also means no parts per million (ppm). The correct term will be mg/kg.
• STEP (Standard for Exchange of Product Model Data) has been approved as a draft international standard. The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) Technical Committee 184/Subcommittee 4 unanimously approved the STEP release that addresses drafting and mechanical design applications. The draft standard will become official six months from the February approval date and will be known as ISO 10303. STEP is a U.S.-led drive to create a universal system for the exchange of manufacturing product data. Seventeen additional applications of STEP are under way. Contact: John Rumble, NIST, 301/975-2203. (From ASTM Standardization News, May 1993).

Acid-free Matboard Sighted in Kmart

Acid-free materials are starting to be marketed to the general public. A few months a , a group of picture frames were being offered for sale in an Austin Kmart store, with their mats conspicuously labeled "acid-free." They may or may not have been acid-free, but the important thing is that they were being promoted as such. (From the Abbey Newsletter.)

Two Pulp Mills Switch from Bagasse to Waste Paper

FAPPI, the newsletter of the ASEAN Pulp and Paper Industries, reports the news from Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore and Thailand. FAPPI is also the name of the organization, the Federation of Asean Pulp and Paper Industries, which met in the Philippines in November. The newsletter had thumbnail sketches of two Philippine mills, UPPC and BPPMI, both of which have been using bagasse (the crushed stalks of the sugar cane plant after the juice has been extracted). The first makes sacks and board, and the second makes medium quality printing and writing paper.

Now both of them are switching from bagasse to waste paper. To quote the newsletter, "Initially, [UPPC] used unbleached kraft pulp and bagasse pulp as raw materials. Later on bagasse pulp consumption was replaced because of the environmental problem and its higher cost as compared with recycled pulp.... From the beginning, [BPPMI] produced paper from wood and bamboo pulp and then later shifted to bagasse pulp. However, bagasse pulp was not suitable for the existing Paper machine so it finally switched to wastepaper usage.,, (ASEAN is a Southeast Asian organization.)

Recycled Paper News has a New Address

RPN has moved to 6732 Huntsman Blvd., Springfield, VA 22152. Its new telephone and fax numbers are 703/569-8670 and 703/569-5086, respectively.

MTI's Specialty Minerals is Busy with New PCC Projects

Specialty Minerals Inc. is the successor to the precipitated calcium carbonate (PCC) business formerly conducted by Pfizer Specialty Minerals Inc. It is now a wholly owned subsidiary of Minerals Technologies Inc. (MTI). Over the last four months it has announced several new projects, both domestic and foreign, for the construction of leased onsite PCC plants at paper mills. The mills will then convert to the alkaline process, if they are not already running alkaline, so that they can use the PCC as filler or (less often) coating. In recent years European mills have been showing an interest in this source of filler, even though natural carbonate filler is plentiful in Europe and widely used there. SMI currently has 30 satellite plants operating in the U.S., Canada, Mexico, and France.

• MTI announced in March that Specialty Minerals would build a satellite PCC plant at Georgia-Pacific's paper mill in Port Hudson, Louisiana, to supply filler for uncoated paper. This mill makes 1570 tons per day of uncoated freesheet, most of which is 8-1/2" x 11" bond.
• In April MTI announced that SMI would build a PCC plant for Georgia-Pacific at its Ashdown, Arkansas, mill. This is the largest uncoated freesheet paper mill complex in North America, with a daily production of 200 tons per day. Like the other onsite plants in the company, it will be operated by SMI personnel.
• In May Specialty Minerals Finland Oy broke ground for construction of a PCC plant at the Metsä-Serla pulp and paper-mill in Äänekoski, which will apparently not use the PCC itself, but will send it to another mill in the same company, the Kangas Mill in Jyväsklyä. The plant is expected to start up during the fourth quarter of 1993.
• On June 1, SMI dedicated its PCC plant adjacent to the Aussedat Rey paper mill in Saillat sur Vienne, France. The mill makes stationery and offset paper.
• On June 8, SMI signed a letter of intent with Nordkalk Oy Ab, another established PCC supplier, to form a joint venture company. Initially it will operate a merchant PCC plant in Lappeenranta, Finland, and an onsite facility at the Enzo-Gutzeit specialty mill in Tervakoski, Finland.