Day 1 – Valmet Fiber Technology Center/Boat Cruise

Day 1 – by Wallace Layman

The PIE trip kicked off with a tour of the Inkeroinen, Valmet Fiber Technology Center near Kouvola, Finland. This 151 year old site has 12 employees that work with customers to pilot various operations prior to bringing a process to a commercial site to solve various customer process problems. In the morning, a process representative, Marja, presented about the capabilities of the site including a process capacity range of 0.5 –  2 tonnes/hr.The Valmet site has stock prep, broke handling, recycled fiber, pressure ground wood, and pulp drying operations. 

We then toured the site’s museum including a cylinder paper machine used in the 1890s. The plant includes recycled fiber and mechanical fiber trials and testing. All of the pilot equipment is mill sized to accurately reflect results that would be seen in the industry. The plant has customers from all over the world come in to test materials and processes before investing further. After the museum visit and presentation we were off to lunch to enjoy some traditional Finnish food in the Valmet canteen. After our lunch we toured the site’s batch operation faculties including all modern paper testing equipment. 

The evening was spent on a dinner cruise sailing through the gulf of Finland where students got to bond with each other and professors as well as take in the gorgeous Finland terrain.