SAPPI visit, shopping and preparing to head home

by guest bloggers Jason Frizzell and Nathan Harmon

Today, May 22nd, we checked out of the hotel in Tampere at 8:00am and headed to SAPPI Paper Mill Kirkniemi. It took two hours to arrive at the mill. Upon arrival, we were greeted by Ms Satu Karjalainen and Ms Aino Kesaniemi. They supplied us with refreshments along with a presentation on the mill.

This mill produces 735,000 tons of coated magazine paper annually. The mill is made up of three paper machines that were installed in the years 1966, 1972, and 1996. PM3 is the second most recent paper machine to be built in Finland. These three machines utilize pressurized groundwood, groundwood, and refined mechanical pulp to produce four different grades of paper. This was the first time (and likely only time) many of us will ever see this kind of pulping process.

The mill supplies magazine paper for over 77 countries and produces paper for world class brands such as Elle, Newsweek, National Geographic, Men’s Health, Vogue, and Marie Claire. Their annual production capacity is equal to producing 2.6 billion copies of Elle magazine. With the production of magazine paper, the mill focuses on paper properties such as bulk, caliper, burst, and opacity.

After the completion of this presentation, we began our mill tour. We saw an automatic process of the logs being oriented and going into the groundwood grinder. From there, we got to observe PM3 and the process of the paper going from formation to coating and then through supercalendering. The supercalender aligns the calcium carbonate coating to create a crystalline glossy finish.

After the tour, we headed toward our final hotel in Helsinki. Once we arrived, the group split off to have our last free evening before heading to the airport at 5:00 am. Some people chose to sauna while others decided to explore the local shopping mall and have one last Finnish (or Asian for some of us) dinner.