Metsä Group to Convert Joutseno Mill to Polysulfide Pulping
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Metsä Group, Finland, reports that it will invest EUR 15 million in developing the production process at its Joutseno pulp mill in Finland. With the company's product and process development work, the world's largest single-line softwood pulp mill in Joutseno will adopt a new pulp manufacturing process – polysulfide cooking. Polysulfide technology has never been applied on such a large scale before.
With the investment, Metsä Group will launch a new kind of softwood pulp on the market, which it says will improve customers' cost-efficiency and the technical properties of the final products, paper and board.
"The investment will strengthen Metsä Group's position in the global softwood pulp market further, as we will be launching a unique product that improves the competitiveness of our customers. At the same time, we will increase the production capacity of our mill by almost 10% and improve the efficiency of production. The investment is proof of the vitality of the Finnish forest industry," says Ismo Nousiainen, SVP, Production at Metsä Fibre.
The main equipment will be supplied by Andritz Oy. Construction will begin this fall. The process will be commissioned in the summer of 2013.
The Joutseno pulp mill is currently implementing a gasification plant investment worth approximately EUR 20 million, and once it is complete in the summer 2012, the mill will be the first carbon dioxide-neutral pulp mill in Finland. This means that the mill will not need any external energy during normal operation but rather will produce all of its own energy using wood-based fuels.
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