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!