UPM Pulp is committed to boosting innovation, efficiency and high quality while further developing its services. According to Roberto Mirande, Director, Technical Marketing and Services at UPM Pulp, innovation efforts can be driven either through outstanding products or services to differentiate oneself in the marketplace. Recent trials with ANDRITZ at their Tissue Innovation and Application Center (TIAC) in Graz, Austria, were aimed at providing an even better service to UPM’s tissue customers.
“Innovation in tissue production is very much region-specific and there are differences in the technology used in different market areas due to varying definitions of quality. It’s important for us to understand these drivers in each region, and this is where we identified an opportunity to gain further know-how in TAD technology, which is mainly used in the North American market,” Mirande explains, adding that running pilot tests is the fastest way to acquire technical knowledge.
In the Through Air Drying (TAD) process, hot air is used to dry tissue sheets, resulting in softer and bulkier products compared to conventional methods.
Making the most of TAD
In October 2024, UPM’s global Technical Marketing and Services team met up with tissue technology and R&D experts from ANDRITZ to conduct runnability and quality trials at their unique pilot plant. The aim was to learn about TAD technology and test its limits with both softwood and hardwood pulps when producing toilet and kitchen towel tissue base papers.
“It was important for us to benchmark UPM’s products and see how competitive their qualities are for this specific end use. The TIAC pilot machine is very versatile and can run different tissue production configurations, allowing us to use our pulps in different ratios. We applied the TAD configuration to kitchen towel and toilet paper products with promising initial results,” Mirande says.
He adds that the team gained a lot of knowledge about TAD technology, which can be transferred to tissue customers. Also, the five-day trial period presented a great opportunity to spend quality time among the global UPM team and network with ANDRITZ, sharing thoughts about the challenges and opportunities that lay ahead in tissue production from a technical standpoint.
Tangible products in phase two
Mirande says the end products of this first phase of trials in Austria – the so-called mother rolls – will be further analysed to define how to achieve the best possible quality with UPM’s pulps.
“I think we were already very successful in reaching our original targets of testing the limits of different furnishes with softwood and hardwood, and in defining the quality barriers reachable with the pulps in our portfolio. Next, the idea is to produce actual products that we can benchmark against items already on supermarket shelves or those that we have previously benchmarked in our R&D facilities.”
The converting phase provides another interesting opportunity to learn more about the requirements for tissue papers and their various end-uses.
“We really want to have something that our customers can feel and touch and compare with their own products. Then it’s much easier to understand in practice what’s behind all of our R&D work,” Mirande concludes.
Text: Timo Nykänen
