Stora Enso Installing PE Extrusion Plant, Automated Roll Warehouse at Imatra Mills

Stora Enso, Finland, is investing EUR 70 million in a new polyethylene (PE) extrusion coating plant and an automated roll warehouse (ARW) at its Imatra Mills in Finland. The Imatra complex, which includes the Kaukopää and Tainionkoski mills, has a capacity of more than one million metric tpy of carton board and specialty packaging paper. With this investment, Stora Enso aims to increase and meet increasing customer demand for food service board and liquid packaging board.

The full roll handling scope for this investment with the new automated warehouse was ordered from Pesmel, and its commissioning is expected to be completed in early Q4/2017. The roll handling system is one of the biggest deliveries in Pesmel’s history, requiring 80 man-years of work. 

 

 

"The system is a good example of our Material Flow How-concept, where the high bay warehouse synchronizes the production processes flexibly and efficiently. With packing and loading included, all of the components of our concept will be delivered," said Kaj Fahllund, VP of Pesmel Paper Division.

The heart of the new system layout is Pesmel’s TransRoll ARW concept, which is connected with sevem in-out connections at different floor levels between the mill production and converting lines. It has some 30,000 metric tons of buffering capacity for intermediate rolls to be used at mill converting, and also for finished rolls to be shipped out to end customers.

This concept’s storing volume can be expanded in the future, as well as the number of its connections. The whole footprint of this warehouse is only about 4,500 square meters, with around 8 metric tons per square meter effective storing density. And as a true heart of mills material flow, it has a whopping 900 metric tons/hr. fully automated in-out handling and sorting capacity with two stacker cranes.   

       

TransRoll ARW is equipped with a full Pesmel WMS warehouse management system, which is connected to the MIS (mill information system) to track the roll flow and to keep the real-time storage inventory for the converting and shipping operations. 

Pesmel’s roll handling scope includes a long, large connecting conveyor system and a new high capacity kraft wrapping line, with robotized core plugging and head insertion. The handling capacity is set to 120 rolls. hr., but this can be increased in the future by 20% to 40%.

With automated truck loading, the unpacked rolls are transported from TransRoll warehouse to a coating mill situated one kilometer away. The rolls are loaded and unloaded fully automatically in horizontal position, which eliminates the possible roll end damages totally. Transferring the rolls unpacked generates remarkable savings to packing costs.

The delivery includes custom-tailored Pesmel FlowCare portal. This digital IoT (Internet of things) interface collects, saves, and analyzes information from the delivered system, and helps to foresee service needs and to eliminate mill’s bottlenecks with material flow. The FlowCare portal gives access to e-shop, spare part, maintenance, and document services, ticketing system, and to 24/7 customer support.

Imatra Mills consist of two production units: Kaukopää and Tainionkoski. Together, they employ approximately 1,000 people and produce one million tmetric tpy of board and paper annually. More than 90% of production is exported, mostly to countries in Europe, but a substantial share is also exported to Southeast Asia.

Imatra produces liquid packaging board for beverage cartons and food service boards for paper cups and various food packages. Typical customers include the food, confectionery, and tobacco industries. High-quality packaging papers and graphical boards used for book covers, cards, and luxury packaging are also made at the Imatra Mills.