8 INDUSTRY NEWS
Pulp Paper & Logistics
Södra Cell to divest Follafoss mill
following a number of years struggling to make a commercial success of its Södra Cell Folla division. At a board meeti ng in August it
S
department poses a serious risk to advancing a recycling society in Europe, EU paper industry associati on CEPI has warned. The guidance is linked to a
T
second batch of End-of-Waste (EoW) measures, applied to paper, copper and glass, which were adopted by an EU regulatory committ ee in July for implementati on in October. In the guidance document the Commission says that “the moment when a material or substance reaches End-of-Waste is simultaneous with the completi on of the recovery and recycling processes”. CEPI strongly argues that, for paper, the guidance document should not describe compliance
September 2012
was decided to divest the mill at Follafoss which produces CTMP (chemithermomechanical pulp), a product with a variety of uses including the manufacture of paperboard and ti ssue. Södra Cell is planning to leave the CTMP
wedish forest products group Södra Cell is pulling out of the CTMP business
market from the beginning of November. “We’ve been struggling to
create profi tability in CTMP for several years. In spite of all the measures we’ve taken, we’ve found it increasingly diffi cult to fi nd a profi table market for what we produce,” explained Gunilla Salti n, president of Södra Cell. Södra says it has used
considerable resources to reverse the negati ve trend, including energy effi ciency improvements, product development and cutti ng the workforce.
“We’ve been trying for a long
ti me to fi nd a soluti on to make operati ng the mill profi table but we now have to accept that previous conditi ons for profi table CTMP producti on at Follafoss no longer exist. We deeply regret that this is the case,” said Salti n. “The fl exibility and creati vity
of Folla’s employees have kept quality and producti vity at a high level and they’ve fought valiantly to keep producti on costs low.” The Folla mill produced 83,500
tonnes of pulp in 2011. Average annual producti on has been
Gunilla Saltin
107,000 tonnes. There are currently 51 employees at the mill.
European waste guidance poses a ‘serious risk’ to paper recycling
he waste guidance issued by the European Commission’s environment
with EoW criteria as being equivalent to recycling. CEPI questi ons the fact that the Commission is putti ng eff orts into something that is likely to cause unintended problems to all stakeholders of paper recycling, and probably in all industry sectors. CEPI points at problems with previous EoW measures (e.g. for steel) adopted by the Commission that have simply been rejected by the market and therefore not been implemented in practi ce. Thus, serious consequences did not emerge yet, but are bound to, when further EoW measures will be adopted. For waste management
companies and waste traders the scenario will be frightening, says the CEPI. With the new interpretati on they would become “recyclers”, without receiving any signifi cant benefi t.
In return, however, they would be legally responsible for the output material as “producers”. This includes liability issues in the quality of waste material and its contaminati on. The full implicati ons of that change in interpretati on are not clear. Requiring such responsibility from waste management companies might just add to the growing list of badly implemented environmental EU measures and would not contribute to smart, green and inclusive growth in Europe.
Considering EoW equal to
recycling will also eff ecti vely break the informati on fl ow for public authoriti es, which may have serious consequences for environmental inspecti ons and enforceability as well as generati ons of reliable data and stati sti cs. Later, when much
larger volumes are supposed to be managed as ‘recycled’ EoW materials by a signifi cant number of operators, problems are bound to occur. Even today, under the strict
waste regime, the authoriti es have not been able to sati sfactorily establish enforcement of legal waste shipments either. For the industries that reprocess the material – in CEPI’s case paper mills – the Commission’s approach will increase the risk of receiving low quality recyclates from collectors. This runs contrary to the original objecti ve of EoW, which according to the EU’s Joint Research Centre, was established to facilitate recycling and not to be a substi tute for it. Allowing all this to happen will
inevitably shake the confi dence of citi zens and risk the integrity of recycling systems, says CEPI.
To view previous issue online visit:
www.pulppaperlogistics.com
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36