Visit to Finland - Summary Xuejun Zou & Gary LI

Size: px
Start display at page:

Download "Visit to Finland - Summary Xuejun Zou & Gary LI"

Transcription

1 Visit to Finland - Summary Xuejun Zou & Gary LI June 3, 2018

2 Major Activities Hosted 2 nd 3D Printing International Workshop Attended PulPaper Exhibition & Conference Visited Kemira Research Centre and VTT Tour KotkaMill Building Materials & Packaging Contacted potential partners/members 2

3 PulPaper 2018 Leading international forum for forest-based industry Exhibition & conference Tour of the most advanced pulp & paper mills Metsä Fibre bioproduct mill, Äänekoski (1,300,000 tonne/yr) Kotkamill Specialties & packaging mill, Kotka (600,000 tonne/yr) Hot topics Bioeconomy Circular economy Innovations Plastic replacement 3D printing 3

4 PulPaper 2018 Most advanced technologies in display Presentations on new technologies & products at Future Square In combination with other events (PacTec, Wood & Bioenergy) 4

5 2 nd Seminar on 3D Printing of Biomaterials Hosted by VTT and FPInnovations 10 invited presentations and ~70 attendees: including companies such as 5 Key topics presented/discussed Wood containing filament (commercial products launched by UPM) Printing cellulose-based structure for electrical transformers (lead by ABB) Cellulose gel for biomedical applications Wood-based materials for additive construction

6 2 nd Seminar on 3D Printing of Biomaterials (con t) The organizing committee Next Agreed on planning the 3rd workshop in Vancouver in

7 What Finnish Companies Are Doing? Transformation of industry in full swing Investment since 2009: 6.6B ($10B Can) Expanding pulp mill production, including bioproducts Significant increase in innovation effort Hiring a lot of new staff (including R&D) Moving to bioeconomy & circular economy through developing Biomaterials and bioproducts Fibre-based packaging (replacing plastics) The Biofore Company The renewable materials 7 Pulp & textile fibres Pulp, textile fibre, tissue & packaging

8 Moving towards Bioproducts - Examples Metsä Fibre: Expanding Äänekoski mill to produce1.3 M tonne/yr NBSK, NBHK & bioproducts UPM: Expanding Kuusankoski mill from 530,000 to 870,000 tonne/yr NBSK, NBHK & bioproducts Finnpulp: Planning the world's most efficient NBSK & bioproducts mill (1.2 M tonne/yr) at Kuopio KaiCell Fibre: Planning a investment of 900 M to build a BioFutureFactory for producing pulp, bioproducts & textile fibres 8

9 Bioproducts Mills Business Case Designed to change the traditional pulp mill P&L Taking advantage of high European energy costs to sell power and increase revenue Reducing the impact of high fibre costs through adoption of technology Spreading the fixed costs (achieving scale) by SW and HW production Creates a new paradigm in NBSK supply Äänekoski Mill Revenues: 20% of revenues come outside pulp Supplying heat to 2 communities 2.4 times electricity required by the mill Yield: 3-5% increase with Andritz A-yield process Scale: 1.3 M tonnes/year (800K NBSK; 500K NBHK) 9

10 Fibre-based Building Materials and Packaging to Replace Plastics KotkaMill Rebuilt from a newsprint mill abandoned by StoraEnso EUR 170 million investment 200,000 tonne/yr laminated paper 400,000 tonne/yr coated board BM2 started up in Most modern coated board machine Baseboard: 3 plies (CTMP in the middle) Coating: Can apply a total of 7 layers (4 top & 3 bottom) Coater: Film size press, curtain coater and blade coater Main products Recyclable barrier coated board for food packaging Cup stock for hot & cold drinks with recyclable barrier

11 Demonstration Projects - Examples Textile fibres (Metsa Fibre) Spin-off from Metsa Fibre to build a demo plant in Äänekoski Plastic replacement (Peptic) Spin-off from VTT to develop fibrebased flexible packaging to replace plastic bags Biofuel (UPM) UPM Lappeenranta Biorefinery uses crude tall oil for making advanced biofuel 11

12 Mill Tour - KotkaMill 12

13 Board Machine in Operation 13 Picture was taken with the permission from Kotkamills

14 Base Board Machine (by Bellmer-Vaahto) Machine length of 230 m, web width of 5.4 m and machine speed up to 800 m/min 14

15 Coating Section (by Valmet) Coating stations: 4: Metered size press 1; Curtain coater: 2; Blade coater: 1 15

16 Reception after Mill Tour 16

17 17 Visit to Kemira and VTT (Espoo) Kemira Research Center(Espoo) 250 R&D staff (160 in Espoo and 30 in Shanghai) Their manager for research & external collaboration expressed strong interest in our tissue research program and bioproducts membership VTT Technical Centre 2,400 R&D staff Co-organized 3D Printing Workshop with FPInnovations at PulPaper 2018 Opportunities in collaboration in foam forming and tissue research (gathered some good intelligence )

18 Other Companies We Had Contacted BillerudKornsas (Biorproducts member) Dinner Meeting with Lars Sandberg, Innovation manager Valmet - Meeting with Ari Sarrio (VP, R&D) Metsa Fibres KaiCell UPM StoraEnso SAPPI Europe 18