Mondi is investing €20 million to further improve the sustainability of its pulp production at the Frantschach mill in Austria. The mill, which is celebrating its 140th anniversary in 2021, has already been self-sufficient in terms of energy for many years and supplies surrounding communities and industrial companies with surplus heat from the pulp production process.“Today, the focus on sustainability and circularity puts fibre-based products, and pulp, right into the spotlight. Not only is wood a renewable resource, but we know that paper is the most widely recycled material in the world with, for example 74% of paper and 83% of paper-based packaging in Europe being recycled. Our new plant equipment will make our pulp production even more efficient and sustainable. The modernisation and expansion of the evaporation plant increases the amount of heat extracted and reduces the need for steam. It also reduces the chemical oxygen demand of the biological waste water treatment by 140 tonnes per year”, says Gottfried Joham, Managing Director of Mondi Frantschach. The decision to invest was driven by the need to make best use of wood as a primary input.

UPM Biomedicals is excited to announce its collaboration with bioconvergence company CELLINK. The partnership brings together UPM’s expertise for producing non-animal derived, nanocellulose biomaterials with CELLINK’s years of experience in method development for 3D bioprinting, offering new groundbreaking solutions to this growing life sciences market. Advances in 3D printing in the past decade have been outstanding, and the technology is becoming more widely used for various cutting-edge applications. 3D bioprinting is already important in areas such as cancer research, where tumour models can be printed to test their response to different treatments. More recently scientists have been exploring the use of this technology in a clinical setting, with the possibility of printing tissues or organs that can then be transplanted into patients. Using non-animal derived raw materials, such as UPM’s nanofibrillar cellulose, for bio-ink formulations makes transplants into humans much more effective, reducing the possibility of an immune response or rejection.

To better align manufacturing capacity in British Columbia with the available long-term fibre supply, Canfor is restructuring its B.C. operations by permanently closing its Chetwynd sawmill and pellet plant and temporarily closing its Houston sawmill for an extended period to facilitate a major redevelopment on the site. The Company intends to build a new, modern, globally competitive manufacturing facility that employs state of the art technology to produce high value products from the sustainable timber supply in the region. Project planning, scoping, preliminary engineering and budgeting are underway. The Company will undertake a comprehensive evaluation of the availability of economic fibre and a thorough project financial analysis, supporting a final investment decision by the end of the second quarter of 2023. Both facilities will be closed following an orderly wind down of operations that is expected to conclude early in the second quarter of 2023 and will remove approximately 750 million board feet of annual production capacity.