After nearly two years of planning and construction, Windsor Mill’s newly reconfigured woodroom is now one of the largest and most modern in North America. The woodroom upgrade allows the mill to increase productivity while reducing fiber loss between the forest and the mill. The woodroom is where logs are debarked and processed into wood chips to feed the mill. The woodroom upgrade involved replacing two existing log-processing lines with one modern, state-of-the-art line. While the previous system could process only 8-foot-long logs, the new single-line system boasts more capacity and can handle logs that are 4 to 26 feet long. Windsor Mill Manager Sylvain Bricault says the debarking process improvement will reduce fiber loss by 4 percent each year, allowing the mill to get more usable fiber from the same amount of wood.

UPM and the US-based pulp and paper producer Domtar Paper Company LLC have signed an agreement for UPM to acquire the total annual kraft lignin production of Domtar’s Plymouth Mill in North Carolina, USA as of January 2021. This step enables UPM to expand its role in the growing lignin business and different application segments. Following the agreement, UPM will increase its supply of kraft lignin by more than 20.000 metric tonnes annually. Part of the supply will be used to complement the existing UPM BioPivaTM product family. UPM lignin products will be sold globally through UPM’s sales network and are supported by strong technical expertise. “We are very pleased to have agreed this new supply agreement with Domtar. It enables us to expand our lignin business in the growing biochemicals market before the start-up of our Biorefinery in Leuna, Germany,” says Juuso Konttinen, Vice President, UPM Biochemicals.

Designed as one of the most efficient specialty paper machines in the world, Koehler Paper commissioned Voith's production line 8 at its Kehl mill at the end of October 2019 - after a previous project time of only around two and a half years. Thanks to ongoing optimization, the company recently achieved a groundbreaking level of performance for the production of around 40 gsm base paper at a continuous speed of more than 1,400 m/min. Thanks to intensive cooperation, permanent project support and continuous optimization from Koehler and Voith, the line achieved an average speed of 1,410 m/min over a period of 24 hours as well as a maximum value of 1,432 m/min - a world record for the MG paper machine.