Tissue producers in Europe operate in a competitive marketplace, working to secure and maintain shelf-space and market share. The need to keep an eye on costs is a given, but it’s not the only issue for producers, who also have to keep up with pressure from their customer base to maintain quality while addressing environmental and social sustainability and minimizing waste.
This is where UPM Pulp’s Technical Marketing and Services (TMS) team of experts comes in. It knows that every business is unique; to make our customers’ businesses stronger, we tailor our service and support specifically around each one.
Solving compelling customer problems
A significant part of UPM Pulp’s R&D involves working with customers to identify the best furnishes for their products, while keeping a focus on their specific operational painpoints: Do they have issues with runnability? How quickly can they respond to changes in consumer behavior? Are energy costs influencing their operational strategies? What do they see as imminent or future problems for the tissue sector? This is where UPM Pulp’s longstanding multifibre expertise and a genuine understanding of the uniqueness of each customer play a huge part.
Production cost is unavoidably a perennial issue for European tissue producers. Pulp choice affects far more than raw material cost. The right fibre selection drives drainage, drying energy, chemical efficiency, machine uptime and first quality yield – all at once. Based on our understanding of this entire process, UPM Pulp’s Technical Marketing and Services team offer a Total Cost Optimization (TCO) service which creates value for tissue customers by evaluating their current processes and offering ways to optimize and improve total cost. As each customer’s process and goals are unique, an individualized, systematic approach is essential.
To identify the best possibilities for moving forward, the TCO service audits where each customer currently is, taking a deep dive into several factors including:
Furnish optimization: Verifying customer furnish choice through benchmarking and analysis; performing refining audit to optimize furnish, quality and energy use; piloting trial work if appropriate.
Cost of Goods Manufacture: Understanding how pulp choice affects drainage, retention and drying; optimizing chemical efficiency.
Overall Machine Efficiency (OME): Looking at how well and how fast machines run; enabling higher speeds and fewer breaks.
Sustainability: Ensuring all fibres are responsibly sourced – UPM pulp mills are FSCTM and PEFC Chain of Custody certified; enabling risk mitigation around reputation, human rights, supply chain due diligence, regulatory compliance and traceability.
Quality: Helping improve or maintain final product quality metrics, both in finished and converted product; understanding how to monetarize quality.
Furnish changes that may look attractive can quickly lose their value if machine performance is affected. A single sheet break can erase hours of accumulated savings – which is why runnability is always part of the optimization equation. Looked at holistically, our TCO service helps European customers maximize profitability by improving consistency and confidence.
The value of benchmarking
As the #1 multifibre pulp supplier globally, UPM Pulp holds one of the most extensive fibre databases in the industry, built from decades of testing hardwood and softwood species. Most pulp suppliers specialize in one fibre type, which means buyers often have to piece together advice from multiple sources themselves. With eucalyptus, northern softwood and birch in one portfolio, UPM Pulp can work together with the customer to optimize the full furnish. .
With mills in both hemispheres and support teams spanning the globe, we’re able to offer geographically localized insight and support. This international reach helps tissue producers throughout the world understand the benchmark for tissue products, so we can help them achieve the results they want.
UPM has conducted pilot trials examining how optimized fibre combinations can affect premium tissue products. The trials showed that adjusting fibre furnish can unlock measurable cost savings while also improving key quality parameters. But there are limits to optimization: these gains must be balanced against strength, runnability and process stability. If furnish changes that look attractive from a purely cost perspective affect machine performance, they will erode their benefit. Overall, these trials reinforced the fact that the real value lies in understanding how different fibres interact – and in having access to all of them.
R&D spanning the globe
All the value-added support services in the world won’t make a difference if we’ve not got our pulp product right. Understanding pulp – how different fibres behave, how they can be treated in the most optimal way – is the foundation for delivering the best pulp to meet customer needs in Europe. UPM Pulp’s R&D relates directly to fibre quality – which in turn relates directly to tissue performance, which is of utmost importance to our customers.
We’ve worked over the decades on improving the genetic material of trees – without introducing any Genetically Modified Organisms – to achieve better quality and productivity. This know-how and experience has enabled us over time to produce more pulp using fewer resources.
UPM Pulp operate in three dedicated R&D centers worldwide (in Uruguay, Finland and China), each with a different specialization, to ensure our pulp products meet the highest standards while also providing our customers with research and expertise to support their product development and production processes. R&D works in tandem with operations across the entire value chain and uses a Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) methodology to assess environmental impacts – from nursery and forestry through to the mill and on to the customer.
Our forestry research centre in Paysandú, Uruguay focuses on developing and refining the best genetic materials for tree plantations. It is the only facility of its kind focused on the eucalyptus strain E. dunnii, which Ricardo Methol, Senior Manager of Technical Development and Planning at UPM Uruguay says is “now the most planted eucalyptus species in the country.” With 60 specialists and 30 years of knowledge, Paysandú’s goal remains improving tissue performance through improving fibre quality. With this in mind, Methol points out that “testing new [eucalyptus genus] candidates against harsh environmental conditions caused by climate change such as frost and drought has become more important.”
Despite our increasing global coverage and remit, Europe remains very important to UPM Pulp. Our Northern Europe Research Center (NERC) in Lappeenranta, Finland is our largest R&D center. The facility’s cutting-edge equipment includes a low consistency refiner that better simulates industrial conditions. The NERC R&D team actively collaborate with customers, combining data and laboratory testing to optimize end-products and identify insights around improving quality or cost-efficiency. TMS uses simulation software that draws on UPM’s fibre database to model how adjustments to refining or furnish ratio will affect a customer’s end product – before any costly mill trial begins. Tom Hultholm, UPM Pulp’s Senior Manager of Technical Marketing Services in Finland explains how we “… help our customers succeed by providing different pulp types that combined can fulfill the customer’s specific needs. Thanks to our work on data and analytics, we can consistently and reliably deliver premium pulp.”
UPM’s AsRC Asia Research Centre in Changshu, China was opened in 2007 and serves as an enabling center to accelerate pulp application in the APAC region. One of its main areas of focus is tissue paper, undertaking pulp property analysis and paper property evaluations according to ISO standards as well as internally developed innovative methodologies. Based on the analysis of mainstream tissue products across the EU, China and the Americas, AsRC has developed a global tissue map, highlighting the differences in tissue performance between regions. With its structured focus on a measurable innovation framework designed to unlock growth opportunities for UPM Pulp and its customers, AsRC covers everything from the basics – questions about pulp – to advanced services including competitor analysis and joint development projects based on pulp end users’ needs.
UPM Pulp is committed to supporting all aspects of innovation in tissue products. We’ve recently signed a multi-year agreement with the international technology group ANDRITZ focused on helping tissue manufacturers develop and optimize next-generation tissue products and processes. Tissue manufacturers will benefit from access to optimized fibre and process solutions via ANDRITZ's PrimeLineTIAC Tissue Innovation and Application Center in Graz, Austria. This will provide a low-risk way to trial innovative solutions tailored to customers’ production setup and will accelerate the development and commercialization of new products.
Turning your uniqueness into your competitive edge
UPM Pulp’s Technical Marketing and Services team are committed to helping your growth and continual refinement of your tissue products. We offer everything from general Q&A about pulp, through to benchmarking, quality reports and optimizing, on to advanced troubleshooting and support during trials. We help you lean in to your unique differentiators and accelerate success, through providing practical support aligned to the realities of your machines and day-to day operations.
We’re helping tissue producers in Europe join up efficiency, profitability and customer satisfaction to drive better business. From the genetics of the tree to the performance of the tissue sheet, UPM’s technical team is present at every step. That is what “we renew the everyday” means in practice.
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