Packaging Corp. of America is investing in upgrades to two paper machines at its three-machine Wallula, Wash., USA, mill (previously Boise Paper). The two machines produce release paper for labels and corrugating medium. PCA, which bought Boise this past October, will improve the quality and range of the paper the two machines produce, said Sean Krajnik, mill manager, in an article this week by the Tri-City Herald, Kennewick, Wash.
The Wallula mill makes nearly 500,000 tons of paper and pulp per year. It has some 440 employees.
The machine that makes the release paper, Desert Lily, will be the first to get upgraded this spring. The rebuilt portion of that machine will be installed in June over about eight days, Krajnik said. It should be up and running that month, he noted in the newspaper article.
The other machine, Princess Sacagawea, which makes corrugating medium, will be upgraded in September. The third machine, Waii Latpu Maiden, makes machine dried market pulp.
The Wallula mill was originally built in 1958, but the paper machines have been expanded and modernized since then. Desert Lily was first built in 1980 and had its most recent update in 2007 to produce release paper. It originally produced envelope paper.
The fiber at Wallula is made up of recovered clippings from the company’s box plant adjacent to the mill (as well as scrap clippings and fiber from other companies), sawdust, and wood from log mills. The mill maintains a cottonwood forest on about 9,000 acres just east of Burbank, where trees are harvested on a cycle of about seven years after planting.
In the photo, Sean Krajnik, mill manager, shows some of the corrugating medium produced on the Wallula mill’s Princess Sacagawea machine.
TAPPI
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