UPM-Biofore-Magazine-1-2016-ENG

“The new drying machine does a brilliant job”, says shift supervisor Mikko Pajari.

Mikko Pajari

TEXT HELEN MOSTER PHOTOGRAPHY TUOMAS UUSHEIMO

A pulp mill is reborn We take a tour of the newly revamped Kymi pulp mill to find out what’s new, bigger and better. Has UPM’s and fine paper manufacturers. Most of the pulpmanufactured at the plant has already been delivered to UPM’s

P ine, spruce and birch logs are neatly stacked next to the debarking plant, with a couple of aspens completing the set. Next stop for these logs can be seen a little further away: a tall pile of wood chips. Conveyor belts criss-cross the area, taking the wood chips to the next stages of the pulpmanufacturing process: digesters and scrubbers. Trucks wait for their loads at one end of the mill area, while forklifts carry neatly wrapped white pulp bales from the warehouse. Some carry the red label ‘UPMBetula’, others the blue label ‘UPMConifer’. The bales contain the rawmaterial for packaging, speciality paper, magazine

own paper mill, where two paper machines turn it into fine paper. We are in Kuusankoski in southeast Finland, at the heart of the Kymi pulp and paper mill. The 200-hectare integratedmill site is like a town within a town. The site has streets with real names such as ‘Fibre Avenue’, ‘Wood Chip Road’ and ‘Sheet Street’. Odourless columns of white steam rise into the blue sky from the chimneys of the clean, orderly site. Here, on the shores of the Kymi River, overlooking miles of coniferous forests, wood is turned into pulp and

EUR 160 million investment made a visible difference?

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