Major Investment by Iggesund at UK Mill

Source from:  Tobacco Reporter 04/06/2011

Iggesund Paperboard is investing heavily to eliminate completely fossil carbon emissions from its UK paperboard mill at Workington, Cumbria. The board of Holmen, the Swedish forest products group that owns Iggesund, has agreed to invest £108 million to switch the mill's energy source from natural gas to biofuels. The Workington investment will see Iggesund implement in the UK the same approach it has adopted at its mill at Iggesund, Sweden. In Sweden, the company is already investing in a new recovery boiler that will allow all production at the mill to be driven by biofuels and that will offer the further advantage of making the mill self-sufficient in electricity. The planned biofuel plant at Workington is being designed to produce a thermal output of 150 MW and will supply all of the mill's energy needs, both as electricity and as thermal energy in the form of steam. The new plant will produce annually an estimated 325 GWh of electricity and 420 GWh of thermal energy. "This investment clearly demonstrates our ambition to develop our paperboard production at Workington," said Ola Schultz-Eklund, managing director of Iggesund Paperboard's UK operations, who has been the driving force behind upgrading the mill's energy supply. "Last year we also invested £3.6 million in rebuilding the refiners in our pulp mill. That reduced our electricity consumption by 13 per cent, but even more importantly it has created the conditions for us to further improve the quality of Incada [the paperboard manufactured at Workington]." Schultz-Eklund added that "The Energy Coast" initiative in West Cumbria had been a major factor in Iggesund's new investment decision. "With this investment and the resulting radical restructuring of our energy supply, we will become a world-class producer of folding box board, thanks in part to the environmental aspects of our production," he said. "And I am positive those aspects will only become more important as time goes on." Iggesund has already invested almost £100 million in developing paperboard production at Workington during the past decade. The mill produces annually 200,000 tonnes of the Incada folding box board and employs close to 400 people. Enditem