Five years ago this week, many in the Strait of Canso area breathed a collective sigh of relief when its largest single employer restarted production after a yearlong shutdown. The reopening of what is now Port Hawkesbury Paper came after a year of legal wrangling and negotiations with the various groups that have a stake in the future of the mill, formerly NewPage Port Hawkesbury, which had shut down when its parent company filed for bankruptcy protection in the United States. It’s a very different company than when it shut down in September 2011. Only one of the mill’s two paper machines — the newer supercalendered machine that produces paper for the magazine and catalogue market — went back into production, cutting the number of employees by about half to around 300. Click Read More below for more of the story.

International technology Group ANDRITZ has been awarded orders from Nine Dragons Paper, China, to supply equipment and key process technologies for five of their mills. The scope of supply on EPS basis includes the following equipment: *A white liquor plant with a capacity of 10,500 m3/d, including a recausticizing plant and an ANDRITZ LimeKiln. The recausticizing plant delivery includes a green liquor cooler, a LimeSlake slaker-classifier, three causticizer tank agitators, a drum filter for dregs handling, a LimeWhite filter for white liquor filtration to achieve high white liquor quality, and a LimeDry filter for efficient lime mud filtration to ensure high lime mud dryness and consequently a low heat consumption in the kiln. The ANDRITZ LimeKiln, with a capacity of 950 t/d burnt lime, will be equipped with a high-efficiency LimeCool sector cooler. *A recausticizing plant with a capacity of 5,800 m3/d. *Two ash re-crystallization (ARC) systems with ash handling capacities of 400 t/d and 200 t/d respectively, to treat the ash from the electrostatic precipitator by decreasing the chloride and potassium content while recovering sodium and sulphate. *A recausticizing plant with a capacity of 5,800 m3/d. *An ash re-crystallization (ARC) system with an ash handling capacity of 200 t/d to treat the ash from the electrostatic precipitator by decreasing the chloride and potassium content while recovering sodium and sulphate. *Three recausticizing plants with a capacity of 2,500 m3/d each.

International technology Group ANDRITZ has received an order from Stora Enso Narew Sp. z.o.o., Poland, to supply an FRX shredder and a metal separator to the mill in Ostrołęka, Poland. The FRX shredder, which is part of the ANDRITZ Franssons product line, will process rejects from the pulping processes of two existing board production lines. Start-up of the new shredder, which will process around 60 tons of rejects per day, is scheduled for January 2018. The shredder will be installed upstream of the reject treatment system, which is part of the 455,000 tons per year board production line for which ANDRITZ also delivered the complete OCC line including reject treatment. Click Read More below for additional information.