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Metsä Group Selects VR Transpoint as Logistics Partner for Roundwood Transports to Kemi Bioproduct Mill
March 5, 2021 - Metsä Group has chosen VR Transpoint as the logistics partner for roundwood transports to the bioproduct mill under construction in Kemi. This decision was based on more than two years of strategic cooperation during which an effective and environmentally friendly overall solution was designed for the transports. Annually, five million cubic metres of wood will be transported to the mill by rail, which means that an average of nine trains will arrive at the mill every day.
The number of wood transports by rail will be increasing significantly in Finland from 2023 onwards when the bioproduct mill in Kemi is commissioned. This means annual deliveries of more than five million cubic metres of wood, for which Metsä Group has chosen VR Transpoint as its transport partner. The logistics solution has been fine-tuned in close cooperation already for more than two years.
“We appreciate our long-term partnership with VR Transpoint and offer them a further opportunity to grow by supplying wood to the Kemi bioproduct mill,” said Juha Mäntylä, COO, Metsäliitto Cooperative. “Railway transports play a significant role in the Kemi bioproduct mill’s wood supply, which requires this new, effective operating model.”
VR Transpoint is enabling a major investment of the forest industry for the second time — Metsä Group chose VR Transpoint as its partner also for the pulp transports of the Äänekoski bioproduct mill in 2016.
Martti Koskinen, Senior Vice President at VR Transpoint, explained, “The efficiency of transports and smooth flow of traffic are key factors when trying to attract major investments such as a bioproduct mill to our country. Finland is located far from the densely populated markets, so we have to catch up with more efficient logistics. We have now managed to create a solution in which the operations of the mill and railway transports are combined seamlessly.”
Wood is transported from longer distances, but with considerably fewer emissions
Due to the increased use of wood, it must be transported from wider areas, from north and south of Kemi, but these transports are done with considerably fewer emissions.
Although the distance travelled by the wood deliveries increases, emissions are reduced by 20% per cubic metre due to effective railway transports, Metsä Group said.
In practice, eight to ten trains will arrive at the Kemi bioproduct mill every day. The efficiency of the transport system is based on perfectly fine-tuned wagon rotation — the time between two consecutive loadings, including all the stages, takes only half the time of an average wood transport.
Rolling stock investments enhance delivery reliability
Due to the new contract, VR Transpoint is investing in approximately 200 new roundwood wagons. The bioproduct mill’s railway transports will require a total of more than 400 wagons. The newest electric and diesel locomotives will be used as the tractive stock. The new electric locomotives can handle loads of up to 2,500 tonnes, which means approximately 20–25% more wood per train.
Kemi Mill Project
Metsä Group is investing EUR 1.6 billion to build a bioproduct mill to replace its current mill in Kemi, Finland. The new mill will produce some 1.5 million tonnes of softwood and hardwood pulp per year, as well as many other bioproducts.
SOURCE: Metsä Group |
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Scaling up Digital Solutions to Improve Warehouse Safety with Anti-Collision Program
By Sami Karttunen, Senior Manager for Supply Chain Logistics, Stora Enso
This post appears courtesy of Stora Enso, a leading global provider of renewable solutions in packaging, biomaterials, wooden construction and paper. The company employs some 23,000 people and has sales in more than 50 countries.
February 2021 - In environments where people and heavy machines co-exist there is always an imminent risk of accidents. As a company, we have the responsibility to take every measure we can to avoid those risks and ensure that each colleague gets home safe every day. In this blog, I will share my experience of how we in Stora Enso have leveraged digital technology to avoid accidents in our warehouses, as well as how digital solutions is paving the way to further improve safety in the future.
We are today undertaking the first company-wide global roll out of a digital solution in our mills. The digital solution in scope is called ‘Warehouse Anti Collision solution’ and does just what the name indicates — it helps humans and machines to avoid collisions in our warehouses. The goal is now that the solution will be implemented in 64 warehouses in seven countries by the end of 2021.
But before I continue, let me first take you back to where it all started. One could safely say that our warehouses are vibrant environments where employees co-exist with heavy machines like forklifts and trucks. Throughout the day, raw materials from suppliers are unloaded in the warehouse and finished products are loaded to be shipped to our customers. In 2016, a discussion was raised around what we could further do to avoid potentially dangerous collisions and accidents between humans and machines in these warehouse environments. Together with my team I screened through different potential solutions already existing in Stora Enso, but came to the conclusion that we needed to create something entirely new to fulfill the need.
Through our Stora Enso Digitalisation Fund we received funds to start the project of setting up a proof of concept of what would later become the Warehouse Anti Collision solution. A handful potential technical partners were evaluated to see if we could continue to build and co-create around their products. In the end, a company which had previously built alarm solutions for cross walks and railroad crossings was selected as our partner.
Together we started in small scale to test and roll out the new solution in our Finnish mill Imatra. The solution comprises detectors which employees carry, and other detectors installed on vehicles, like for example forklifts. When the two detectors come close enough to each other, an alarm goes off. Throughout the project, our employees have been highly involved in testing and giving feedback on the solution. Through the testing we made early discoveries — for example, the alarm signals needed tuning since they were irritatingly loud, and the radio signals needed to be strong enough to penetrate objects such as paper rolls.
As the project proceeded, important enhancement areas of the solution were identified. The detectors could also be configured to prevent unauthorized people enter restricted areas — only people carrying a detector should be able to enter. Moreover, what if we could decrease the number of unnecessary alarms going off if we could configure the detectors to work differently in specific safety zones? We solved this challenge by programming the detectors to sense when a human is inside a safety zone and thus deactivating the alarm signal, while also ensuring that a vehicle cannot enter the safety zone at all.
Reflecting on this journey, I am most proud that the implementation of this solution has greatly reduced the risk of accidents in our warehouses. Since the solution was implemented in Imatra, we have had no accidents or even close calls to accidents between humans and machines in our warehouse. I am also very keen to see what the future holds for our global roll outs of digital solutions.
2021 and forward is going to be the time of truly scaling out digital technology in our mills and sites cross the company to increase safety. As an example, we are now focusing on scaling out the IoT hand valve sensors during the coming years. These sensors further help us ensure that we have control over the fluids in our mill systems to avoid accidents of leakages. Another example is a mobile app currently being scaled out to support employees with social distancing during the Corona pandemic.
These are only a few examples of what we are doing. And looking even further into the future, many of the digital solutions we are working on for our mills are also indirectly going to increase safety for our employees. For example, when we automate processes, or ensure proactive rather than reactive maintenance with the help of analytics and AI, we also reduce the risk of humans becoming the subject of an accident. Digitalisation will help us ensure we deliver on our goal of every colleague getting home safe every day.
About the author: Sami Karttunen joined Stora Enso in 2004 and started out as responsible for developing the rail logistics from wood terminals to mills, and has also had the role of production engineer for Imatra mills. Most recently he has worked as a Senior Manager for Supply Chain Logistics in Finland. Sami was also the initiator and project manager of the digital Warehouse Antti Collision Solution.
SOURCE: Stora Enso |
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Metsä Board Testing Intelligent Packaging for Sheeted Paperboard Transit
Feb. 16, 2021 - Last year Metsä Board tested intelligent pallet tags and software to track and record varying information when shipping paperboard sheets from the Simpele board mill in Finland to Hull in the UK. Information was recorded and analysed from production at the mill site, during train transit and shipment all the way to port in the UK.
The widening of the partner network with software provider Empirica Finland, as well as the learnings from the new technology, may bring benefits to Metsä Board's customers in the future.
“We gained a lot of useful information from the project and learned from the deviations in the data. We can, for example, use this information to see where challenges or issues in shipping and transit may arise and put measures in place to prevent potential incidents,” said Product Management Director Leena Yliniemi, who was the project manager.
Sensor tags that can record humidity, light and temperature were placed on top of the pallets. Empirica Finland provided the software that collected the data during the shipment. They also made a mobile app for collecting pallet data such as bar codes, QR codes and photos at the mill and at the ports in Finland and the UK. The photos taken by the port operators proved particularly beneficial supporting partner network interactions and with data for the final analysis.
“In the future we can add more parameters to the list of data, for example, tilt, vibration and pressure," Yliniemi pointed out.
The project team consisted of people from the mill, from the UK and from within the supply chain.
"We intend to extend this research and further test this new technology; most probably we will look at routes from Finland to Germany,” Yliniemi added.
SOURCE: Metsä Board |
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Russia's Proposed Log Export Ban in 2022 to Have Far-reaching Impact on Global Forest Product Markets
Feb. 12, 2021 - Russia exported 15 million m3 of logs in 2020, which accounted for almost 12% of globally traded roundwood. Much of this trade may come to a halt next year when a new law proposed by Russia's president will ban the exportation of softwood logs and high-value hardwood logs as of January 1, 2022, according to a focus report released by Wood Resources International (WRI).
The Russian government is also considering new regulations aimed at reducing the exportation of green softwood lumber. This regulation is loosely planned to also commence in 2022 and is intended to incentivize investments in dry-kilns to produced dried lumber for exports. Reducing log and green lumber exports will likely stimulate further value-added processing within Russia and better control illegal logging, WRI said.
While the proposed ban is not yet law, it is widely expected to be implemented and passed into law in the second quarter of this year. If enacted, the law will most significantly impact Eastern Russia, where an estimated 10% of the timber harvest is exported in log form.
In the short-term, the Chinese lumber industry will be most directly impacted, as exports of softwood logs mainly from Russia Far East are likely to be prohibited. According to a just-released study, Russian Log Export Ban in 2022 - Implications for the Global Forest Industry , China will probably look to source more sawlogs from other regions of the world, such as Oceania, Europe, and the US. The increased competition for logs in those markets will likely put upward pressure on sawlog prices.
Mid-term, the study expects that China will evolve from importation of roundwood to importation of lumber. This shift will allow lumber manufacturers in Europe and Russia to increase shipments to China.
Although it is expected that the export ban will drive Russian investment in new lumber capacity, there might also be some impact on other forest industry sectors, for example those planning to co-locate pellet plants with sawmills. In addition, the possibility of restrictions in the exportation of green lumber will encourage more investments in kiln drying capacity, thus improving access to markets in Europe and the US.
NOTE: The excerpt above is from the just-released Focus Report "Russia Log Export Ban in 2022 - Implications to the Global Forest Industry", published by Wood Resources International LLC and O'Kelly Acumen.
Wood Resources International LLC (WRI), an internationally recognized forest industry-consulting firm established in 1987. To learn more, visit: woodprices.com.
SOURCE: Wood Resources International LLC |
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Paper Excellence Receives Favorable Ruling from Brazilian Arbitration Panel to Complete Acquisition of Eldorado Brasil
Feb. 5, 2021 - Paper Excellence on Feb. 4 announced that the International Chamber of Commerce (ICC) arbitration court in Brazil has ruled in favor of Paper Excellence in a case against J&F Investimentos SA, the parent company of Brazilian pulp producer Eldorado Brasil Celulose.
The court's ruling will allow Paper Excellence to acquire all of the remaining shares of Eldorado Brasil, of which Paper Excellence currently owns 49.41%.
History
On September 2, 2017, Eldorado Brasil informed its shareholders in a market announcement that the company's major shareholder J&F Investmentos, a holding company controlled by brothers Joesley and Wesley Batista, had agreed to sell its entire stake in the company to CA Investment (Brazil) S.A., a subsidiary of Paper Excellence. According to Eldorado, the purchase price for the company amounts to 15 billion reais ($3.61 billion), adjusted for working capital and net financial debt at completion.
Under the terms of the deal, the parties had one year from the date of the agreement to complete the transaction.
In a securities filing on Sept. 4, 2018, Eldorado Brasil announced that J&F had exercised its right to terminate the previously concluded agreement with Paper Excellence and CA Investment for the sale of its 50.59% shareholding in Eldorado. Eldorado Brasil said in the filing that it had been informed by J&F that a deadline to conclude the deal with Paper Excellence and CA Investment had expired on September 3, after a 12-months period, which triggered J&F to cancel the deal.
A bitter dispute ensued with both sides accusing each other of not complying with conditions set forth in the initial agreement. CA Investment then filed an arbitration claim against J&F.
Current
Eldorado Brasil has the installed capacity to produce 1.5 million tons per year of bleached short-fiber pulp. The mill is located in Três Lagoas, in the state of Mato Grosso do Sul, Brazil. According to Paper Excellence, in 2019, the mill produced 1.8 million tons of pulp.
"We welcome Eldorado's employees and all of its stakeholders to Paper Excellence," said Claudio Cotrim, Managing Director of Paper Excellence in Brazil. "Our immediate focus with Eldorado will be to integrate it seamlessly into the Paper Excellence Group, including evaluating how best to invest in expanding its capacity in a timely manner."
With the incorporation of Eldorado Brasil, Paper Excellence will have approximately 7,000 employees worldwide and an annual production capacity of 5.3 million tons of pulp and paper.
SOURCE: Paper Excellence and online news reports. |
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