UPM-Biofore-Magazine-1-2017-ENG

TEXT MATTI REMES   PHOTOGRAPHY TUOMAS UUSHEIMO, UPM; COURTESY OF THE INTERVIEWEES

UPM Kaukas leads the way in promoting the circular economy

UPM Kaukas is a frontrunner in the circular economy: The mill site makes efficient use of wood-based raw materials and also converts residues into goods with economic value.

T rucks and trains transport logs and pulpwood to the integrated UPMKaukas mill in Lappeenranta. Wood also arrives by ship and by means of log driving along the Saimaa water system. The production facility comprises a pulpmill, a paper mill, a sawmill, a biomass power plant and a biorefinery, all of which together consume a considerable amount of wood-based rawmaterials. All raw materials are utilised efficiently with an eye to minimising waste. The integratedmill is an industry forerunner in the efficient use of resources and the harnessing of side streams, says Teuvo Solismaa , General Manager of UPMKaukas. “Globally, we are the most versatile integratedmill site in the bioforest industry. We turn renewable rawmaterials into pulp, paper, sawn timber, energy and biofuels. This is what UPM’s Biofore strategy means in practice,” Solismaa says. Over 120 years of circular economy Industrial symbiosis is currently a hot topic on the circular economy agenda. This is when adjacent production plants use all of the raw materials entering the area as comprehensively as possible. “UPMKaukas has followed this principle for over 120 years,” says Production Director Jaakko Nousiainen fromUPM’s biorefinery. Industrial production at the current mill site began in 1892 when Kaukaan Tehdas Osakeyhtiö transferred its spool factory fromMäntsälä to Lappeenranta. The spools were made from birch, but to begin withmost of the raw material went to waste. When a pulpmill was built in the same area in 1897, the leftover material was put to use. Over the next few decades, a sawmill and a paper mill were added to the Kaukas mill site. This formerly also comprised a plywoodmill, but plywood production has since been transferred to other UPMproduction plants in Finland. The latest addition to the integratedmill site is the biorefinery, which began producing biofuels from tall oil, a residue of pulp production, in 2015. Its main product is the renewable traffic fuel UPMBioVerno. Efficient use of by-products Production at UPMKaukas is carefully planned to make efficient use of all side streams and residues. Solismaa offers logs as an example, explaining how the pine and spruce logs delivered to the Kaukas mill site are turned into sawn timber at the sawmill. Slabs that are not saleable are chipped, and the chips and the sawdust from the sawmill are used in pulp production at the adjacent pulpmill.

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