Södra Offers More ECF Pulp

During Tissue World, held in Milan in early April, Södra Cell updated some paper trade journalists on the latest news concerning the Swedish pulp making giant.

The company is the world’s largest unintegrated producer of softwood kraft pulp with capacity of about 1.6 million tonnes/yr. After a bumpy startup following a large expansion project at its Värö mill, the facility is on target to produce more than 600,000 tonnes of pulp this year and to reach design capacity of 700,000 tonnes in 2018.

And, a lot of that will be elemental chlorine-free (ECF) pulp which is in high demand from Asia, according to marketing director Marcus Hellberg. A lot of this ECF pulp is destined for tissue makers in China.

With improvements in technology, there are few if any negative environmental effects to ECF compared with totally chlorine-free (TCF) pulp. Hellberg noted that ECF has better tear strength and reduced brightness reversion, which is important to the Asian market because of the long transport times. There is also less fluorescence, which is also important to the Chinese market because there is an ongoing debate about the possible negative effects in tissue.

Finally, Hellberg said the company is studying the possibility if increasing the capacity of its Mönsterås mill by another 500,000-600,000 tonnes/yr of softwood kraft pulp.