Paper and Pulp Manufacturing Industry: Economic Audit

Paper and Pulp Manufacturing Industry: Economic Audit

Table of Contents

Introduction 3

Industry Demand and Supply 8

Industry Structure 9

Government Regulation 12

Macroeconomic Impacts 13

International Impacts 13

Appendix A 15

Bibliography 17

Introduction

Paper making started with the Egyptians, recorded as far back as 2700 B.C., using a papyrus plant. The methods were lost until fifteen years ago. The Chinese, however, have been credited with the first recorded method in paper making (Kuhlberg, 2006). Ts’ai Lun, a member of the Imperial Guard, used tree bark, linen scraps and hemp in 100 A.D to create paper (Carter, 1925). He is known as the inventor of paper. Paper making did not spread to the United States until 1960. William Rittenhouse started the first mill in Germantown, Pennsylvania (Erben, 2011).

Paper products have enabled both literacy and cultural development for the United States. The pulp and paper industry consists of manufacturing woody plant material into a variety of pulps, papers, and paperboards. Paper is typically made from “pulping” also known as crushing fibrous plant or woody material into its cellulose components using either friction or chemicals. During this process the waste, material other than the cellulose components, is eliminated along with water via heat and pressure. Figure 1.1 illustrates the process of pulp and paper manufacturing operations. Several steps go into making paper, however, I will only touch on the main ones.

Timber is typically gathered from well-managed forests, meaning more trees are planted then farmed for sustainability reasons. Once the timber is brought to the mill, the bark is stripped from the logs in various ways. The bark from this process can then be used for fuel or as soil enrichment aids. At this stage, the manufacture must choose how they will make the pulp. Pulping is done in three ways, mechanically, chemically and waste recovery.

The highest yield of pulp is produced by the sulfate method (chemically), followed by mechanical (FAO, 2014). If the logs are to be used for chemical pulp they are then put into chippers to be chipped into small pieces. These chips then are passed along to the screening area where the undersized, oversized and dust chips are rejected.

Figure 1.1 Illustration of process flow in pulp and paper manufacturing operations

Pulps produced mechanically are done so by grinding wood against a stone or between metal plates in order to separate the wood into individual fibres. This yields roughly an eighty five percent extraction rate (Anderson, Astrakianakis, & Keefe, 2011).

Due to breakage in the cellulose fibres caused by this process, mechanical pulp is weaker than chemically separated pulps. This method is considered to be cost effective, however, very energy intensive. One way manufactures have learned to offset this is by utilizing the bark as fuel. Lignin, a complex organic polymer deposited in the cell walls of many plants making them rigid and woody, reacts with ultra violet light. Therefore, papers created from mechanical pulp look yellow when exposed to the light.

Chemically produced pulps are produced by chemically dissolving the lignin between the wood fibres in chips from de-barked logs. This process yields forty to fifty-five percent extraction rate (Anderson, Astrakianakis, & Keefe, 2011). There is very little breakage in the cellulose fibres caused by this process, therefore making chemical pulp stronger than mechanical pulp. The pulp can be cooked, continuous or batch basis. Chemically produced pulps are energy friendly; the recovery boiler operations and the controlled burning of the bark and other residues can offer power to the grid around the mill or steam to local heating plants. This chemical process is considered hazardous to the environment if the liquid waste produced as a byproduct goes untreated.

Sulfate pulping requires aid from sodium hydroxide and sodium sulfide in a continuous batch, which produces a black liquor. The organic component in this is called black liquor and is captured and re-used as fuel via the recovery boiler. The inorganic component separated from the black liquor is called green liquor and that is treated with slaked lime that then creates a white liquor for later use as actual lime. Sulfite pulping is not used much these days, primarily due to the issues of getting into public waterways; however, there are still small niche uses for this type of pulp cooking in batches. Sulfite pulping utilizes acid to breakdown the cellulose via one of four alkaline bases: calcium carbonate, sulfite, magnesium hydroxide, or ammonium hydroxide, which produces a red liquor. During this process, gaseous sulfur dioxide is captured and re-used. The red liquor can be re-used for heat and the chemical recovery of all but calcium-bisulfite-base operations.

Waste paper, also known as recycled, is re-pulped via a relatively mild process, which sometimes uses water and sometimes Sodium Hydroxide. Waste paper may contain ink due to office papers, newspapers, etc. Before it can be recycled, the ink needs to be removed or else it will spread throughout the pulp causing a greyish tint. There are two types of processes used to de-ink waste paper, washing, and floatation. Waste paper is then put into a machine called a Hydrapulper that contains a very powerful agitator that breaks up the paper into small pieces. These Hydrapulper have special devices attached for removing unwanted items such as wire, plastic, paper clips, etc.

With washing, a series of washing steps may or may not include the use of chemicals to help dissolve any remaining impurities. Bleaching agents are also sometimes used to whiten the pulp. However, bleaching does have its disadvantage because it can reduce fibre length, which will lessen the paper quality. In cleaning the waste paper using the flotation method, chemicals are added which make a sticky like froth on top of the pulp. Air bubbles are blown through the pulp and these bubbles carry the inks to the surface which must be removed before they break or the ink will go back into the pulp. Some manufactures may utilize this method due to it not requiring as large of a water treatment plant due to the ink being removed in a concentrated form. In both methods, filling agents such as glues and resins are removed by blowing air through the pulp. A foam is created which contains the unwanted chemicals and can then be removed.

The next step in the paper making process is the blend chest. This is where the various pulps go along with numerous chemicals that can be added in order to obtain the required characteristics to the finished paper. Dyes are also among the chemicals added as necessary in order to color the paper to a desired color. The dyes fix themselves to the cellulous fibres. The prepared pulp is then put into the paper machine. Figure 1.2 is an example of a paper machine. The average paper machine is roughly two football fields long and thirteen feet wide (Confederation of Paper Industries) consisting of seven distinct sections. These machines can reach speeds of up to sixty miles per hour.

Figure 1.2 Paper Machine

The machine is also divided into two segments, wet and dry. The diluted stock is poured into the paper machine through the flow box. A narrow slit running across the width of the box so that the stock flows onto the wire with the fibres distributed evenly over the whole width of the paper machine. The wire section could be as long as one hundred fourteen feet and as wide as the machine itself. The water drains off leaving only tiny fibers as a mat on top of the wire mesh.

The press section is made up of a number of heavy thick felts of synthetic fiber rollers. The fibres that pass through here are squeezed to remove more the water left over from the wire section. The fibres then pass through a large number of steam-heated drying cylinders in the drying section where it continues to run through until it is completely dry. In the middle of the drying cylinders is the size press where a solution of starch and water is added to the fibres to help improve its surface for printing purposes later. The fibres are then passed through a series of calendars. These polished iron rollers irons the paper along with smoothing it out and polishing it. The paper is then passed onto the jumbo rollers for distribution.

Industry Demand and Supply

The paper and pulp industry has a wide spectrum of end paper products; its growth patterns closely resemble those of the general economy. There are five shifters of demand and six of supply according to Brue, Flynn, and McConnell (2014). Some firms are closely related to changes in the industrial activity, others are more directly affected by changes in the levels of personal income or by demographic factors.

An example of industrial activity that could potentially effect changes in supply would be the resource prices. With the attention around deforestation