Fibre customer magazine 2019/2020

Serving our customers around the world

EUROPE

“In Europe pulp buyers and pulp mill engineers are most inter- ested in the pulp analysis and benchmarking service. This service shows the differences between various pulp grades and allows the customer’s pulp recipes to be improved, which in turn enable cheaper production and products that are of a higher quality. The refining audit service, which audits and optimises the cus- tomer’s refining process, is popular. Pulp refining is an aspect which customers often pay too little attention to in relation to its

importance. Among other things, the service has solved product quality problems. One of our customers had a dust problem at their tissue paper machine, which was the result of the wrong kinds of refining con- ditions. These conditions also turned out to be the reason why the tissue paper machine had to be stopped and washed much more frequently than usual. When the refining was optimised, the dust problem of the base paper was fixed and the product’s further processing became easier.”

Juho Rossi Technical Customer Service Manager, Metsä Fibre Germany. He supports the customers in Europe.

CHINA

“The most popular services which our customers prefer to use are our pulp benchmarking, furnish simulation and refining audit services. Via pulp benchmarking and furnish simulation services the customers can understand advantages of our pulp quickly and get the benefit from our pulp database. The recommendations after the refining audit are also very much appreciated by our customers. The service helps our customers to increase their competi- tiveness especially in the current depressed paper and board market in China.

For example one of our fine paper customers in Henan prov- ince, who had never tried our strong grade, got results which exceeded their expectations. Also, one our Tissue customers had a refiner with some prob- lems that might potentially cause major refining energy waste. The customer was not aware of the problem before the refining audit service. The Chinese customers are excited about Metsä Fibre’s highly automated process control and sustainability performance. They have expressed their interest to learn about Metsä Fibre’s technical expertise in Finland.”

Henry Guo Technical Customer Service Manager, Metsä Fibre China. He supports the Chinese pulp customers.

ASIA

In Asia the most popular services for our customers are pulp benchmarking and furnish simulations. These are done by using our Furnish improvement tool (FIT), which contains a vast amount of data of different pulp qualities. The customers are always looking for a way to reduce cost in their operations and this service provides good basis for investigating ways to achieve that. The most efficient way of reducing cost is to be able to increase filler amount in the furnish. Both the cost and quality effect of that increase can be simulated by our FIT-tool. Customers are also very interested in comparing different pulp qualities – both hardwood, softwood and BCTMP pulp – from the market. This can easily be done with the pulp benchmarking service.

The other services that have proven to be popular are the pulp refining audit in addition to furnish simulation and optimisation. For the refining audit service Metsä Fibre has a great fibre opti- misation and refining evaluation tool (FORE). The tool has been recently updated and a new version of that is being currently tested. A hot topic in Asia, as most probably all over the world, is energy reduction. Refining audits often lead to recommenda- tions on how to reduce energy in the refining process. Saving in energy consumption is always a welcomed outcome of a study especially if at the same time there is an added benefit of improving the refining result.

Mikael Engman Technical Customer Service Manager, Metsä Fibre Singapore. He supports Metsä Fibre’s customers in South East Asia in technical matters.

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