Iggesund’s Fossil-Free Mill Now Within Reach

Iggesund Paperboard, Sweden, reports that its vision of a fossil-free paperboard mill (Iggesund Mill in Sweden) now is within reach. "We’re getting close to the vision of a fossil-free mill that we’ve lived with and that has driven our investments for a long time," says Mill Director Olov Winblad von Walter. "Our new recovery boiler (photo), which came on line in spring 2012, is getting better and better as we fine tune it, and our increasing pulp production is also boosting our energy production."

 

For a while in mid-April, the Iggesund Mill was able to operate solely on bioenergy and also supply almost all of its own electricity needs. Another important aspect in the vision for Iggesund Mill is that emissions to air and water should be so low that Iggesund is among the global leaders of comparable producers. Yet another goal is that a minimum of by-products will go to landfill.

 

Iggesund Mill is one of the world’s integrated paperboard mills with the highest level of investment. When it started up, the new recovery boiler was the mill’s biggest investment to date, at a cost of about EUR 250 million. The boiler enabled the mill to gradually increase its annual pulp production from what was then 350,000 metric tons to 420,000 metric tons.

 

"Our sulfate process for pulp production means that we separate out the cellulose fibers that comprise half the mass of a log," von Walter continues. "The other half consists of the wood’s binding agent, which is mostly an energy-rich substance called lignin. We burn this in the recovery boiler and it produces enough steam and electricity to cover more than 90% of our energy needs."

 

A fossil-free energy supply is not the only benefit from Iggesund’s new recovery boiler. After the boiler had been fine-tuned, it turned out that particle emissions from the mill, which were already low, had been halved. Sulfur emissions, which contribute to the acidification of surrounding land, have also fallen by more than 80% from what were already low levels.

 

Just a little more than a year ago, Iggesund’s board mill in Workington, England, radically changed its own energy source. From having run on fossil natural gas, the mill switched to using biomass. Achieving this required the investment of about EUR 122 million in a new biofuel boiler. Today the mill operates solely on biofuel and, in addition to covering its own energy needs, also supplies fossil-free electricity to the U.K. electricity grid.

 

"One of the goals driving our investments is long-term sustainability, and the investments in both Iggesund and Workington are the result of that approach," explains Staffan Jonsson, head of Group Technology at the Holmen Group, to which Iggesund belongs.

The Holmen Group is one of the world’s 100 most sustainable companies according to the U.N. sustainability index, the Global Compact Index.