We aim to investigate the risk exposure against commodity prices in the forestry and paper industry. The intension is also to study the affect that the changes in commodity prices has on a company?s market value..

The author contacted designers Claesson Koivisto Rune Arkitektkontor in August 2007regarding his Master thesis at KTH. The company had discussed the possibility of creating achair made from molded pulp. The author was taken on as a manager for the project. Theobjective was to produce design documentation for a paper pulp chair which was to belaunched at the in 2008 Milan Furniture Fair. The purpose of the thesis was to develop aproduct with scientific methods as well as to investigate how to make collaboration betweendesigners and engineers easier through communication.The project went through four basic stages: Information, Analysis, Synthesis and Evaluation.Information on paper pulp, molded pulp, chair design, sitting postures and the existingmarket of molded pulp furniture.

The aim of this thesis is to investigate the correlation between the price of electric power and investments within the Swedish basic industry. Using regression analysis, the authors test for correlation between the electricity prices and the basic industry, defined as the Pulp and paper industry, the mining industry, the steel and metal industry and the basic chemical industry. Moreover, five variables found in the literature on investment decisions are being used as a means of comparison. The results suggest that the electricity price affects the investment decisions within the basic chemical industry as well as the steel and metal industry. On a more abstract level, this thesis contributes to the understanding of one of the properties of the Swedish GDP..

Benchmarking is an established method of working which is often used in order to develop the quality of the organization. However, almost 70% of the organizations with benchmarking fail due to the lack of planning and structuring of the benchmarking exercise. Maintenance sections in the paper and pulp industry are one of those who have decided to conduct benchmarking. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to gain knowledge of how the maintenance sections in the paper and pulp industry deliberately structure and plan to use benchmarking as a driving force for quality development in the maintenance sections.The study is a hermeneutic case study. Telephone interviews and document analysis have been used as data acquisition methods.The results show that there is a lack of both planning and structuring in the benchmarking process, and lack of management commitment for quality improvements within industrial maintenance.

The Swedish Pulp and paper industry meets higher demand for energy efficiencyi mprovements with increasing energy prices and changes in the Swedish renewable energy certificate system. One action of energy efficiency improvement is by using secondary heat, that otherwise would have been treated as waste heat, for use in a system with lower temperature demands. The aim of this Master´s thesis is to identify possible secondary heat sources in a typical Swedish pulp and paper mill and to investigate what economic benefits the secondary heat will provide when being used for pre heating of wood chips to a kraft digester.The Master´s thesis focuses on three secondary heat sources; dry warm air, warm water and moisture saturated warm air located inside the pulp or paper mill. Two types of kraft digesters are simulated within this study, a typical Scandinavian digester and a modern twin vessel steam phase digester.Due to quality aspects and low temperature level drying is the drying technology with dry warm air rejected. Using warm water in direct contact with wood chips increases the quantity of water to the evaporation plant and thus reduced pulp or paper production and is therefore also rejected.

Benchmarking is an established method of working which is often used in order to develop the quality of the organization. However, almost 70% of the organizations with benchmarking fail due to the lack of planning and structuring of the benchmarking exercise. Maintenance sections in the paper and pulp industry are one of those who have decided to conduct benchmarking. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to gain knowledge of how the maintenance sections in the paper and pulp industry deliberately structure and plan to use benchmarking as a driving force for quality development in the maintenance sections.The study is a hermeneutic case study. Telephone interviews and document analysis have been used as data acquisition methods.The results show that there is a lack of both planning and structuring in the benchmarking process, and lack of management commitment for quality improvements within industrial maintenance.

Competition of spruce fiber raw materials has increased dramatically in the last few years, leading to the fact that transportation costs in the current situation represents a much larger share of the total raw material cost. The Holmen-owned pulp industry Hallsta Paper Mill's location on the coast also constitutes a problem, because of the lack of raw material, which is much larger there, than for a pulp mill located in the hinterland. For a coastal industry it?s therefore natural to import much of the raw material by boat or to buy it from the timber terminals, in order to maintain good profitability. The purpose of this study was to analyze how the size of Hallsta Paper Mill timber supply area, without competition, with competition and with terminal use, affects the company ?s transport costs.

At Rottneros pulp mill mechanical pulp is bleached with hydrogen peroxide. The changes of bleaching chemicals that are used for different grades are taken from bleaching tables; however these tables are old and need to be updated. The purpose of this thesis was to be the basis of new documentation.In this thesis three pulps where studied with the aim to find the optimal bleaching chemical changes (total NaOH/VP-quote) for each pulp. The pulps were taken from the filter before the bleaching tower and the pulps were bleached in the lab. The most important pulp property in this study was the brightness and how that was influenced by the chemical dosages.

In the production of pulp, paper and cardboard, a large amount of water is used daily. The water has to be purified in the internal purifying plant before it reaches the receiving body of water. In the biological purifying stage at the Stora Enso Skoghall mill, an aerated basin is used where the microorganisms, using oxygen, oxidize the organic material to carbon dioxide. The air is pumped from the bottom of the basin and the oxygen can then be transported from the air bubbles to the water through diffusion. The problem with aeration of waste water from the forest industry is that wood residues, such as fatty acids, are making the transport of oxygen in water more difficult.

According to Food and Agriculture Organization newsprint is defined as: Uncoated paper, unsized (or only slightly sized), containing at least 60 percent of mechanical wood pulp. The consumption of newsprint in Sweden was just over 798 000 tonnes in 2009, which represents approximately 90 kg per person. Although there are studies that predict a drastic reduction in newsprint consumption in the Western world, there seems to be a clear difference between forecasts for the future given by statistical analysis of newsprint consumption and forecasts given by experts in the industry. The former predict a continuing increase while the experts see a coming decrease in consumption.In this report, both demand and business strategies of newsprint in Sweden are studied. The study also presents a forecast of the future which is based on historical data and qualitative interviews.

Until the beginning of the 1900:th century the paper making process was handicraft. The paper machines that have been developed since then are as impressing in size as fascinating when it comes to the technique. The process has always been improved to give a better paper for lower costs, with as short manufacture time as possible. Stratified forming has been a reality since 1830. From the beginning it was applied to board and paperboard.

The competition for Norway spruce pulp wood in Central Sweden increases, forcing the supply-structure of Holmen to face two important challenges. Firstly, it is of the outmost strategically importance to secure the long-term supply of Norway spruce pulp wood to the industries. Secondly, Holmen desires to increase the obtainable volume of Norway spruce pulp wood. This would enable the company to choose volumes in the lower price-segments and thereby decrease the dependency of costly marginal volumes. As this work shows, one part in managing these challenges could be to lower the quality standards concerning root rot (Heterobasidium annosum). Facts presented in the work shows that: 1. Technically, the TMP-industry of Braviken can handle a much more rotted pulp wood than that used today, although the cost of refinement increases.

Metso Paper offers a front-running range of solutions and services for the Pulp and paper industry. At the baling unit, design solutions are developed for manufacturing and handling of pulp bales. The machines are continuously developed to satisfy customer needs. One big step in the development of the baling line was to remove hydraulics from the machines and replace it with electrical motors and pneumatics. This was not done on the folding machine which is still driven by mainly hydraulics.

Södra Cell Mörrum is one of the five paper pulp plants that are included in Södra Cell, and the paper pulp that is produced here is not only sold to Swedish paper mills. Most of the paper pulp is exported to different countries in Europe. In the manufacturing process the plant needs different kind of process water and there are guideline values for how much copper, iron and sodium this water is allowed to contain. Analyzes of this water is in the current situation done with an atomic absorption spectrometric instrument (AAS-instrument) with a flame. Measurements done with flame-AAS of samples that have concentrations near the guideline values for copper, iron and sodium, are not reliable. The reason for not being reliable is that the quantitation limits of these metals are higher than the limit values.

This thesis work was made for Södra Cell Mörrums bruk in Blekinge. The purpose of the work was to develop a computer model in the simulation program Extend for the removal and balance of organic oxygen consuming substances, measured as COD (Chemical Oxygen Demand), in the new biological treatment plant in the mill. The plant produces two different pulp products, TCF- (Totally Chlorine Free) pulp and ECF- (Elementary Chlorine Free) pulp, for sale. The different bleaching procedures affect the characteristic of the wastewater and thus the effectiveness of the biological treatment plant.In the model that was developed the COD in the wastewater was divided into five different COD-fractions: soluble easily degradable (SS), soluble hardly degradable (SR), soluble inert (SI), particulate inert (XI) and particulate biomass (XB). To create the model FlowMac? was used as a base.