The European forests and ways of forestry are now hot topics as the European Union Commission have launched proposals that would create substantial problems for forest owners and forest industry, not least in the Nordic countries.

A long-standing collaboration between KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Linköping University and RISE in Sweden has resulted in an electrode paper that could be used for energy storage in batteries or supercapacitors. An important development step was the recent pilot runs to produce enough electrode paper for a continued application development.

In 2020 the French paper industry produced 6.87 million tonnes of paper and board. Like in other big European countries the main raw material source is recycled fibre.

In comparison with e.g., Canada, Finland and Sweden, the British paper industry’s fibre need is to about 70 % covered by recycled fibres.

Seven European producers of kraftliner and testliner are investing heavily to supply the corrugating industry.

The world population is growing and there is an increasing need to feed more of us, already now critical in many areas. Could this be a business opportunity for the pulp industry?

Since 1983 Valmet has had an unbroken chain of tissue seminars but Covid-19 caused the planned tissue seminars for 2020 to stop; Tissue Talks LIVE and Tissue Talks DIVE. Instead these seminars were arranged as webinars, which also proved to work very well.

Sweden, like the rest of the world, is hit by the Covid-19 virus and makes strong efforts to minimise the spreading and effects of it.

A year ago I wrote about the fact that pulp and paper companies in addition to their core businesses are treading new paths outside the traditional. Integration along the pulp and paper value chain has been executed for many decades, in particular by acquiring packaging converters and paper merchants.

Lignin is gaining an ever increasing interest from researchers as well as from forest, plastic and energy industries. Having been mainly regarded and used as an energy source by the pulp and paper industry in the past, it is now also seen as a renewable raw material with great potential for an array of products replacing those fossil-based.

Nanocellulose is perhaps not on everyone’s lips but is a widely spread buzz word within our industry. A “googling” on the word nanocellulose while writing this article resulted after a search time of 0.45 seconds in some 701,000 hits. So the topic is obviously a hot one.

The pulp and paper industry is of great importance to the Finnish economy and accounts for more than 20 % of the country’s export value. In addition to that Finland has well-known consultant companies and a substantial mechanical industry producing equipment and services for the pulp and paper industry worldwide.

As a writer, I regularly compose articles for the Swedish pulp and paper magazine Svensk Papperstidning, as well as in-depth features focusing on the pulp and paper industry of specific countries.

The pulp and paper industry has since early days increased its efficiency by developing new process technologies, switching from rag to wood as raw material and eliminating products with no future.

If fibre-based composites are to make an important breakthrough they have to be produced efficiently in order to successfully race against fossil-based composites.

In Finland the major pulp and paper companies are always ranked high when university students are asked about their preferred employers.

The Swedish pulp producer Rottneros, the fuel company Preem and the bioenergy development company RenFuel have signed an agreement to build a lignin plant at the Vallvik kraft mill.

The forest and chemical industries aim to contribute to a more sustainable society looking for new ways of utilising forest biomass for products where fossil oil can be replaced.

Swedish pulp and paper industry is really showing confidence which has materialised in all time high investments.

Together with a large industrial consortium, VTT Technical Research of Finland has launched a EUR 4.5 million project to speed up the development of fibre-based products as alternatives to oil-based materials like plastics.

In June Stora Enso permanently shut down PM8 as well as the connected groundwood pulp production at their Kvarnsveden paper mill in Sweden.