One Week!!!

Wednesday marked the one week day of our wonderful Suomi trip. Here's a photo of the boys after their trip in the smoke sauna:

After a tiring night at the lake and sauna on Tuesday, our group of students woke up bright-eyed and bushy-tailed to hop on the bus at 7:15. The bus had one extra seat on the way to the first site due to the loss of one of our fellow TREEtrippers, Audrey Cook.  She was staying behind in order to catch a flight back to United States for her sister’s wedding.  Hopefully she has a wonderful time!!

We travelled a little under two hours to the UPM Jamsankoski SC Mill which was one of the two UPM Jamsa River mills. Upon arrival at this site, we met our host Mikko Vuori along with three supervisors Mikko Aho, Timo Ahonen, and Patrik Johansson.  Refreshments were served in a conference room for us travelers as the hosts gave a presentation on UPM and the Jamsankoski mill. As some of you may know UPM owns the Madison mill where University of Maine students can co-op. The presentation was very helpful for those of us who weren’t familiar with the company.

The products of the company are split into three main groups: energy and pulp, paper, and engineered materials. The facility we visited was under the first two categories. The presentation gave an overview of the types of paper produced at the mill and their end uses.

The tour of the facility came after the presentation.  We were finally able to satiate our thirst for the small hard hats we had seen around other mills.  It was a smaller, compact form of hard hat given to each of us for the tour. The supervisors took us around the mill to the areas they were stationed. First we went to one of the two TMP areas on site.  For many of us, including myself, it was the first time we had seen a thermo-mechanical pulp operation other than in person.  We were even able to retrieve a sample of the pulp and passed it around the circle of us Mainers.

We then visited PM 6 and PM 5. PM 6 was on a scheduled shut down for maintenance.  The supervisors were able to give us helpful hints on some real life situations and problems in the mill that they had to face and said couldn’t have been learned in school, but only from experience.  I know that the paper machine tours are very valuable for both myself and others.  At the end of the tour our hosts thanked us and even complimented us on our knowledge of the papermaking process and the questions we asked.

Lunch was had in the mill cafeteria with our hosts before we left for the next site.  I have a bad habit of pouring myself a tall glass of sour milk which seems to be a favorite over here. However, I fail to realize it until I take my first sip. The infamous black sausage we had been informed about from our Aalto friends was served at lunch as well. Although I can’t say I’m a fan of the scary color, the taste of the sausage was wonderful.  I can’t say everyone thought the same.  From all of us, we would like to send our thanks to our wonderful hosts at UPM Jamsankoski.  After lunch, we hopped on the bus and travelled to our next site! It was a long trip and some of us konked out as seen below:

- Molly White

Day 7 (Audrey Cook)

Monday night we went to dinner at a trendy BBQ restaurant in Tampere with the marketing manager from Metso. It was a delicious 3 course meal that ended in an amazing chocolate pie! Tuesday morning we got to sleep in a bit because our bus left our hotel at 8:30. Breakfast was phenomenal again with a huge selection of fish and bread as well as coffee and tea. First stop was Metso automation! Our whole morning was presentations focusing on Metso's quality control such as rucking variability with reduced bleaching chemicals and increased automation in process control. We had a wonderful three course lunch with Metso automation which we greatly appreciated prior to heading out for a tour of Metso's FAT room. FAT stands for factory acceptance test. After this tour we went to Metsaboard. After a brief presentation in which we learned Metsa is actually owned by Finnish forest owners, we got a tour of board machine 3. Metsaboard only produces paperboard, and this was the first board machine any of us had seen. After Metsa we went to visit Metso's Tako mill where they do research and development mostly for power. We saw their bio fuel developments as well as their boilers.

Also check out this video of us at the Metsaboard facility!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cUv4_P2D6E4&feature=youtu.be

Helsinki/ Tampere

Off on a new adventure we have arrived in Tampere. It was weird to leave Helsinki this morning after four and half days we had almost gotten used to it.

We can get to the bus and train stations as well as the port, two malls, a giant department store, and market square, add the few land marks in and we will be giving tours in no time. Though we will be back at the end of the week to test those skills.

PS Don't mention Hockey right now.

Day 5

Sappi

Today we left the city and travelled to Kirkniemi to visit the Sappi facility.  As we learned on the ride over, this mill deals totally with mechanical pulp.  I have been co-opping with Sappi so this mill was of great interest to me. Kirkniemi houses three paper machines including PM3 which is the newest of the three dating back to 1997.   There are about 600 employees and each summer over 90 students are hired at this one facility.

There are 9 Sappi mills in Europe and the Kirkniemi is somewhat “isolated” from the others making exporting a little trickier.  Electricity is much more expensive here in Finland than in the states.  It can take as much as 100 US dollars to create 1 ton of pulp in energy costs alone.  Consider us lucky… 

Before entering the mill, we were reminded of the safety guidelines and how we could remain safe while in the mill.  When we first got to the machine floor, it was evident that this was a newer machine.  There was a gap former which allowed this paper machine, 8.5 meters in width, to run at speeds as high as 1500 m/min!  In addition to the paper machine, there was an offline coater capable of reaching speeds of 1840 m/min with a single side being coated with blades.  Continuing down line, there were 3 calendars and 2 winders.  The entire facility was spotless; I could have eaten off of that floor if it were not against the Finland equivalent of OSHA Standards… 

Another interesting fact about the mill at Kirkniemi is that the water source is a lake.  This makes the waste water treatment very important for the process.  For this reason, Kirkniemi is held to some of the highest water quality standards around.

The Sappi facility at Kirkniemi has allowed me to better understand the differences in paper making world-wide.  Though the end goal is the same, there are many ways to go about creating the product.  Visiting this facility reminded me how much I miss working in the mill.  Can’t wait to get back!  Shout out to Joe, Mike, and the rest of the gang at Somerset if you guys are following.  A special thank you to our hosts at Sappi!

Metso Paper Valkeakoski

Our second stop for the day was in Valkeakoski where we learned about Metso’s stock preparation and recycled fiber innovations.  It was very interesting to see some of the new technologies that they displayed.  It is exciting to see the capabilities of this new machinery. 

We also toured the facility.  Little headsets were distributed and proved to be quite useful in the noisy environment.  I know that this was my first experience in a foundry and it was quite interesting to see the forging process of the refiner plates and pieces.  These pieces must be extremely precise because they are often times rotating within .1 mm of a stationary piece.  They are CNC machined to achieve this.  It was a very interesting process.

The other area we toured was the service shop where pieces of equipment from all over the world are shipped and repaired.  It was funny to see that at first, we were more impressed by a banana tree located at the entrance.  Who would have thought that my first glimpse of a banana tree would take place in Finland?  We quickly found that there was more interesting things in the shop.  We really found this to be interesting and we were able to get a better understanding for the size of the objects mentioned earlier in the presentations.

We are going to be meeting our new acquaintances from Metso for dinner in Tampere.  Looking forward to it!  Thanks to the crew at Metso Valkeakoski!

Day 4: Suomenlinna

On Sunday we visited the island(s) of Suomenlinna. This was actually the one spot that our hosts so far had told us to check out so we decided that it was something that we should probably do. Suomenlinna is actually a collection of 5 small islands that used to be a naval fort and still actually has a small naval academy still on it.

This is the island as we approach it from the ferry over:

Since we arrived on the island around 1pm we all decided that we should stop into the grocery store there and pick up some lunch. After perusing the store around Molly, Emily, Kody, and I decided that we should just get a baguette and sort of cheese spread and go eat it by the water side. When we came outside after making our purchases we found that the rest of our group (Jon, CJ, and Steve) were nowhere to be found and since we don’t have any way to communicate amongst ourselves we decided that they must have just gotten tired of waiting for us and left to go explore the island on their own. 

 

Behind us in the picture is the naval academy. That bridge is also what connects the 2 of the smaller islands to the main island. This is also the start of our day of “12 second” photos. What that means is Molly’s camera has a 12 second timer on it so instead of asking people to take our photo, Molly would go and place the camera and then sprint to where we were to be in the shot.

                These islands though were amazingly beautiful and we had such a great day weather wise to be there. Here are some pictures of our adventure (one of the boys from the other group will post about their time a little later):

Plaque about Suomenlinna

The main building of the naval academy

Some of the hills on island E

Kody playing on one of the many guns on the island

12 second photo of us on one of the cannons. As you can see the distance away from the camera has increased.

 

Kody playing on the cannon

There also was a bunch of people dressed up as Charlie Chaplin on the island

The Suomenlinna Church

The tomb of Augustin Ehrensvrd

There was a small flight of stairs she had to run down on this one

We found a tree Emily could fit in

So I naturally had to attempt it

 

I was so scared I was not going to be able to get out of there. For those who don’t know Emily is 5’0.5”, I am 6’0.5”. I’m actually sitting on my knees in this picture

Kody doing the “Jon Lee” pose

Doesn’t look so far…

…She ran up the hill and that rock 3 times because the camera kept falling. Those people behind her offered to take the photo after the 2^nd time but we told them we had it covered.

Emily embracing the beautiful day we had.

Panorama of the soccer field overlooking the ocean

A few hobbit holes

She jumped a foot and a half gap to make this one

 

Some of the actual fortress of Suomenlinna

We locked Kody in one of the cells on the island. We almost didn’t get him out of this one

Our group’s last 12 second photo of the day. Sadly Kody got kinda cut out of it

We eventually met back up with everyone and ate dinner at this pizzeria that was built into a part of the fort

The “King’s Gate”

This is where we had reunited with the other group earlier in the day before splitting off again to see the rest of the islands. It turns out they thought we had ditched them and angrily stormed off without checking the grocery store to see if we were still in there. 

Us leaving the island.

We had such a great day on Suomenlinna. It was a really nice, relaxing way to end our weekend in Helsinki before gearing up for a week packed full of tours. 

Stay tuned for more,

--Nick Hart