UPFRONT
Well, that’s it. After possibly a million Oprah exposés on “How to Budget During a Recession”, The New Homeless America”, “How to Survive the New Depression” and “How to Decorate/Cook/Style your Hair/Be a Good Wife When you Have No Money” ad nauseum, the US media have finally announced something positive about the recession – it’s over.
With American house sales rising continually beyond forecast levels and American manufacturing having expanded for the first time in 19 months, Federal Reserve officials have said that the US is officially in recovery as of 1 September.
If only a bit of that US optimism would blow down south. Keep those Oprah exposés on PVR and the champers collecting dust, South Africa, because we’re not out of it yet. Yes we might have skipped the worst of it due to substantial government investment in 2010 infrastructure and beyond, but stories of retrenchments and down-sizing continue to fill headlines – not least of which is the necessary but very hard position that Sappi currently finds itself, in which possibly 400 employees might lose their present positions in three of its South African mills.
But even when South Africa finds itself officially in recovery too and free of financial constraints, we still have energy constraints to deal with. In the recent presentation given by Eskom to TAPPSA’s Northern Region, Eskom explained that there remains an inadequate generation capacity to meet projected demand growth over next 5 years and an inadequate Reserve Margin to allow sufficient space for generation plant maintenance.
As a result, reducing energy costs in whatever way possible continues to be a prominent item on the “mid-recession/post-recession” agenda. We have therefore dedicated this issue to providing possible energy-saving solutions within your mill – from press felts (page 14) to shoepresses for the tissue industry (page 36) to boilers (page 12) and beyond.
Outside the walls of our pulp and paper mills, the rest of the world seeks energy-saving solutions too – primarily in the form of sustainable, large-scale bioenergy production schemes. As a result, wood’s traditional role as a pulp and paper creator is becoming increasingly overshadowed by its role as an additional energy source and a brave hero in the war against climate change.
But will pulp and paper ever be left completely in the dark, without a constant flow of precious fibre? Of course not.
In an email that a colleague sent me, US-basedInternational Paper has found a number of key reasons why consumers should and always will choose paper:
- The energy used to produce paper for the average person for an entire year would only run a computer for five months
- Reading an entire newspaper uses 20% less CO2 than reading a news website for 30 minutes
- Where 60% of paper is biodegradable and 100% recyclable, only 18% of all electronic devices are currently recycled and none of them are made from renewable resources
The list goes on and on. Paper might always be needed, but changes in how it is needed are certain:
Firstly, as the world becomes increasingly anxious to minimise our need for fossil fuels and our impact on the environment, the traditional roles of pulp and paper will be blurred. Even as we speak, one ecstatic engineering student from Södra is resting his bottom on a chair made from a blend of pulp and polymers. RISI reports that Södra has named the new composite Durapulp and the chair design, Parupu (the Japanese word for paper). The chair is biodegradable, inexpensive to produce and lightweight – and it is the start of something new: PulpLabs, a new Södra initiative to push the boundaries of pulp and paper.
Secondly, every aspect of the way we produce pulp and paper will be scrutinised and changed. Already, Sappi (in conjunction with Mercedes, Timber Logistics, the Department of Transport and …. ) has transformed the company’s transportation of fibre to its mills. With the launch of the first four of an expected 15 Performance Based System (PBS) vehicles on 3 September, Sappi now uses a fleet of trucks that are 28% longer and permitted to carry 22% more load than their predecessors in the industry. Not only are the PBS vehicles 18% more fuel efficient per ton transported, they will also potentially reduce the number of trucks required to transport timber for Sappi from the current 70 to 55. Read more about this first for SA’s transport industry on page 6.
Thirdly, a change that must rather than will take place is a better understanding of the bioenergy market, in order to better monitor its impact on our own industry. For this reason, TAPPSA attended the Biofuels Seminar, held in Stellenbosch University on 3 August, where Africa’s role as a future biofuels provider was discussed by leading experts Prof. August Temu (World Agroforestry Centre) and Prof. Lee Lynd (Dartmouth College, USA). This is in light of the formalisation of a new global biofuels project, the GBS (Global Sustainable Bioenergy) Project. See page 4 for more details on this.
Happy reading
Jodie Davies-Coleman
