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“This money pipe was a present to us from the bank during our groundbreaking. It’s a reminder to keep on schedule so we could turn the valve and start the flow of money.” Riia Ratnik, CFO of Estonian Cell
Remember the first time you ever set foot inside a mill? Whether you were a youngster, or a young university graduate, or an adult – you were no doubt fascinated by the sights. Perhaps you were intimidated by the massive moving machinery, and in awe of the hard-working people who operated the complex equipment. There was so much to learn, and so much to master!
Walking through this greenfield bleached chemi-thermo mechanical pulp (BCTMP) mill in Kunda, Estonia brings those same feelings to the surface again – the newness and the excitement are reflected in the eyes of the workers. Enthusiasm awaits at every turn – an infectious gift from your host and tour leader, Lauri Raid, Production Manager of AS Estonian Cell.
There is no doubt that Raid loves what he does. “When I was studying pulp and paper at the university, I dreamt of a time when there might be a greenfield mill in Estonia,” Raid says. “I didn’t really think it would really happen, though. You can imagine how happy I was when this project was announced!”
The “project” that Raid is referring to is the Estonian Cell mill designed to produce 140,000 t/a of hardwood market pulp. AS Estonian Cell is located in northeast Estonia, just a short distance from the Baltic Sea.
Major investmentThe € 153 million investment by Austria’s Heinzel Holding, Norway’s Larvik Cell, and the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development is the second-largest direct foreign investment in Estonia.
The owners selected RWE Industrie-Lösungen of Germany, now a division of MAN Ferrostaal, as the turnkey contractor in April 2004.
“The idea was to have a turnkey contractor with full responsibility, one major supplier for technology, and somebody else to handle the balance of the plant (water, effluent, power, etc.),” says Heinz Günther Grollman, a Vice President with RWE.
According to Grollman, Andritz was involved very early in the technical discussions and contributed significantly to the process design and technologies employed. It was natural then that Andritz would become the technology supplier. YIT of Finland was selected to deliver the raw water and effluent treatment facilities. KSH, a subsidiary of RWE, was responsible for basic and detail engineering, as well as delivering the balance of the plant.
Johannes Galos was the Andritz Project Director. Galos coordinated the overall project and was the primary liaison with the customer (RWE) and client (Estonian Cell). Johann Unger was the General Site Manager, with overall responsibility for the site activities. The Andritz team, including wood processing experts from Finland, drying experts from Austria and Sweden, and mechanical pulping experts from Austria, came to Kunda in May 2005. “It was like running a small company,” Unger says. “We had to build our infrastructure, hire sub-suppliers, handle the accounting, and personnel.”
Unger certainly has the credentials for the job – having been with Andritz for 40 years and having supervised projects literally around the world. “Even after all these years, it is very exciting for me personally to help new regions and countries develop. This is an important achievement for Estonia.”
Aspen as wood sourceEstonia is a richly forested nation. Over 50% of its territory is covered with forest. Aspen (populus tremula) accounts for 7.3% of the nation’s wood volume. Roar Paulsrud, one of the owners of Estonian Cell, developed the idea of establishing an aspen pulp mill in 1999 as he bought aspen from Estonia through his Norwegian company, Larvik Cell. One of Larvik’s subsidiaries is responsible for wood purchasing. Long-term purchase agreements are in place with the state-owned RMK and with Nor-Est Wood, a private company. Both suppliers have FSC certification. Estonian Cell’s annual demand at full capacity is 380,000 m³ of aspen pulpwood. The Andritz technology gives the mill flexibility in handling lower quality wood.
A showcase for technologyAs Project Director, Andritz’s Galos has a unique overview perspective of Andritz’s technology. “It is really a source of pride for me to see how our technology can help a mill meet its challenges in so many ways,” Galos says.
For example, the challenge for Estonian Cell is to get the maximum good quality fiber from the supply of aspen logs, says Heikki Valtokari, Andritz’s Project Manager for the woodyard delivery. This involves not only yield (minimum wood losses), but the ability to screen out off-spec wood early in the process. The line includes debarking, chipping, screening, chip storage and reclaim, bark, and fines handling.
Valtokari explains that the wood supply includes short or long logs (3 to 6 m), which can be frozen or unfrozen. These are processed in different campaigns so the process can be optimized. The variable speed drives installed on both the PowerFeed™ and the RotaBarker™ provide the flexibility to process the logs with varying conditions.
The RotaBarker™ dry debarking process releases bark from the logs and immediately discharges the bark, preventing contact with the debarked log surface. This eliminates the need to wash the logs before chipping. The retention time of the logs in the RotaBarker™ is short compared to the time needed in a conventional drum.
Debarked logs are chipped to optimum size in the horizontally-fed HHQ-Chipper™, what Valtokari calls “the centerpiece of the woodyard,” due to its influence on chip quality. Bark is treated in a Hooper™ bark shredder and is sold as bio fertilizer and/or biofuel.
The chip silo stores about two days of production. Chips pass through an Andritz screen with decks for accepted chips, oversize chips, and fines. The portion of accepted chips fed to the silo exceeds 90%. Oversize chips are sent to the re-chipper and fines are sent to a separate pile to be recovered as biofuel.
From the woodyard, the chips are conveyed to the main mill, which showcases Andritz’s P-RC™ APMP (Preconditioning Refiner Chemical / Alkaline Peroxide Mechanical Pulping) technology. According to Christian Laser, Andritz’s Project Manager for the Mechanical Pulping delivery, the APMP process “produces pulp with high quality mechanical and optical characteristics, with reduced energy consumption, and easily bio-degradable effluents. There are no sulfur compounds to deal with.”
Laser walked through the main process steps: chip washing, impregnation, HC refining, screening, reject refining, and HC bleaching before the pulp is flash-dried and baled. Andritz delivered all the major systems for each process step.
Impregnation is done in two stages (Impressafiners and vertical twin-screw impregnators). Mainline HC refining uses two large Andritz S2070 refiners. Four screens (two primary, one secondary, and one reject) comprise the screening room. Rejects are handled in an Andritz TwinFlo™ refiner. The pulp is thickened with a disc filter before moving to the HC peroxide bleaching system. The bleached pulp is dewatered in a large twin wire press and then fluffed before drying.
The two-stage flash drying unit, according to Kurt Olsson, is designed for 500 t/d peak capacity. Olsson is a Senior Project Manager for Andritz’s fiber drying unit in Sweden. “Flash drying is typically used for mechanical pulp because a web of pulp would not be strong enough to dry on a sheet dryer,” Olsson says. “The technology gets its name from the speed with which the pulp is dried. The pulp enters the dryer at about 48% dryness and is transported by the hot air as it is being dried. Total time from input to output is about one minute. The dryness at output is about 88%. By recirculating the air we conserve energy.”
After the pulp is dried to a dryness of about 88%, it is transported to the Andritz bale finishing line. The slab press is a new design from Andritz. “This was not just a matter of scaling up an old design,” says Thomas Radauer, Andritz’s Senior Product Manager. “We had to completely re-think the design to achieve high capacity.”
The result is a new press with a feed chute and pre-compaction unit on top. In the pre-compaction unit, the descending pulp flocs form a mat between two belts, while the excess air is discharged through the belts via suction boxes. From the pre-compaction unit, the fiber mat enters the distribution chute and then the press itself. The compressed pulp, at 88% dryness, is conveyed to the baling for wrapping, tying, stacking, and forming export units.
On schedule, on budgetThe contractual start-up date for the mill was April 24, 2006.
“The planning and construction of this mill were big achievements, but one of the most important achievements for me was the production of the first pulp bales on March 23rd,” says Margus Kohava, Mill Manager.
Another important milestone was the Provisional Acceptance test. By contract, the mill had to run for 72 hours at design capacity producing prime quality pulp. Acceptance occurred on September 1st and Estonian Cell took over operations from the turnkey contractor RWE.
Since then, there have been a series of performance tests by grade, as well as tests of the woodyard equipment and water treatment plant, according to Riia Ratnik, Chief Financial Officer for Estonian Cell. Ratnik was the first employee hired by Estonian Cell in August 2004.
Ratnik moved back to Estonia from her job as a controlling manager for a German automotive supplier to be part of the project. “When I came to the industry, I thought that making pulp would be simple compared to discrete manufacturing. Now I know better. It requires continuous optimization. There are so many variables, you sometimes can’t even foresee them all.”
Ratnik and her team are using their millwide information system to analyze consumption and manufacturing costs to identify opportunities for improvement. “One area of focus, which will be a continuous process, is the optimization of costs,” she says. “At first we were concerned with making production. Now we must shift our attention to consumption, energy, chemicals, etc. to fine-tune our costs.”
Estonian Cell is in a good position with regards to energy costs, thanks to a long-term agreement with the state-owned Eesti Energia company, according to Ratnik. “Still, there are things we can do to fine-tune the energy consumption of the refiners,” she says.
“Cost optimization requires good stability of production,” Ratnik says. “Many days, we run at 90-100% of design. Our target is to run at 90% for the year. We know we can reach the target, but there are still days when we have operational surprises.”
“The first year, we have been able to show positive financial results,” the CFO explains. “Two of our owners are very experienced in the pulp and paper business, which is a big help to us. They understand what it takes to succeed.”
A respect for nature“Estonia has very little experience and history in pulp production,” Kohava says. “We have had two very old chemical pulp mills in the country, and only one is operating today. It was built in 1938.”
“The biggest local concern before this mill was built was that it would be similar to the old chemical pulp mill near Kehra,” Raid says. “People were concerned about potential pollution and noise.”
“Nature and the forests are so much a part of our history,” Ratnik explains. “Our mill design is such that the noise level at the gate is 55 db during the day and 45 db at night. The average noise level in a home is 50 db. I think people are surprised at how quiet this mill is.”
“It is perhaps surprising that the government made our permit levels for water treatment stricter than most Scandinavian mills,” says Kersti Luzkov, Estonian Cell’s Technology Manager. “We have a complex permit which places limits on every hour of production.” Luzkov oversees the company’s four laboratories (water, wood, analytical, and pulp labs) that monitor quality and environmental impact. “We built an 11 km pipeline from our effluent plant to the Baltic Sea,” she says. “The last 2.5 km is under the sea. The fresh water demand per tonne of pulp is about 14 m3. To my knowledge, these figures are very low.”
Fine-tuning grades and operationsThe Heinzel Group handles the worldwide sales and trading of Estonian Cell’s output. “We are getting very good feedback about our pulp quality from both Heinzel and our customers,” Kohava says. “But since this mill is so new, we are still developing our final products in cooperation with them.” Kohava admits that Estonian Cell is making more products and different products than it will in the future.
“One of the advantages of the technology is that we can be flexible in producing products that are tailored to our customers,” he says. “However, we have to rationalize our grade mix. We just need to find out what gives customers the most benefit from our pulp.”
“Learning every day.”“We wish to show the Western world that a small country is able to build and operate a modern mill,” Raid says. “When the world finds out we can produce a high-quality product in an environmentally friendly way, and create jobs, we hope they will respect what we are doing here.”
“This greenfield mill has been a major accomplishment,” Kohava adds. “The project was well-managed. It met all the agreed time schedules and costs. It started up as scheduled. Everything went as planned. However, when you build up a mill, all the small and separate parts need to be fine-tuned. Our employees are gaining experience every day. We are all learning every day!”
EstoniaAfter centuries of Danish, Swedish, German, and Russian rule, Estonia attained independence in 1918. It was forcibly incorporated into the Soviet Union in 1940 and regained its freedom in 1991, with the collapse of the Soviet Union. Since the last Russian troops left in 1994,
Estonia has been free to promote economic and political ties with Western Europe. It joined both NATO and the EU in the spring of 2004.
The forests have always played a key part in Estonia’s survival. During the Russian occupation, groups of Estonian freedom fighters (the “Forest Brothers”) hid in the forests for years, and from these deep hideouts, raided and attacked the foreign occupiers of their country.
The capital city, Tallinn, was established in 1154 amidst the pagan lifestyle and rituals that pervaded the area. One of the world’s oldest universities, the University of Tartu, was started in Estonia in 1632. Wooden buildings of this period were sawn from the rich Estonian forests. A short time later in 1664, a Swedish company built the first pulp and paper mill in Estonia, once again taking advantage of the vast forests for commercial production of paper.
Modern forest management may have its roots buried in the rules created over 400 years ago. It was forbidden to cut and use trees in a zone bordering the coastline in order to protect the land from erosion of the Baltic Sea. Trees for new boats, firewood, and buildings were cut from deep in the forests and transported to the shoreline villages for use.
