Held 11-14 March, the show brought visitors from 52 countries and six continents to the Miami Beach Convention Center. While the majority of the visitors were from North America, there was also a larger than normal presence of Latin American tissue makers, perhaps reflecting the growing activity in terms of investments in that region.
The trade show included nearly 125 suppliers as exhibitors and coexhibitors and most indicated that, although the aisles were never really crowded, they were very pleased with the highly-focused, high-level people on hand.
As one experienced exhibitor put it: “The beauty of this show compared with others we attend is the level of the visitors. We had 15-20 customers and all are serious prospects. This compares with some other shows where we get hundreds of stand visitors but very few offer true business potential. At Tissue World it is quality, not quantity, that makes it worthwhile.”
CONFERENCE DRAWS LARGE CROWD
Among the attendees were nearly 300 delegates to the Tissue World Americas conference, which featured a total of 36 speakers addressing the theme of “Meeting the Challenges in Today's Tissue Business”. The well-rounded program, covering key market developments as well as important new tissue making technology, was very well received by the audience.
The meeting was kicked off with two good speeches about market developments.
The first, by EU Consulting’s Esko Uutela, who is also a consultant to RISI, was an in-depth look at where the North American tissue business is headed. Specifically, among many other factors, he tried to answer questions related to what trends are ahead. Will there be any growth in the North American tissue market? Will the industry consolidate or fragment ? And what can be expected with respect to products and technology?
Uutela said he expects growth but at a fairly slow rate as the big North American markets are so mature and penetration levels so high. A rate of 1.6% in 2008 is expected, which is the average trend for the past 10 years, with this slowing to 1.3% for 2009. Operating rates are likely to decline slightly throughout 2008 and 2009 but still remain at an acceptable level of some 94%, close to ‘normal’ market conditions with no cause for alarm, he said.
Fragmentation seems to be increasing in North America. In the seven years from early 2001 to early 2008, the North American tissue industry has reversed some of the consolidation that had taken place over the preceding decades. The capacity share of the top players fell, with the share taken by the top three companies decreasing from 69.1% to 63.5%, that of the top five down from 78.4% to 75.7%, while the share of the top 10 went down from 91.4% to 88.8%.
Among the three top companies – G-P, K-C and P&G – it is clear that G-P has lost market share, going from nearly 36% of the NA market down to just over 30%, while both K-C and P&G have been able to more or less maintain their shares. Among the growing companies, Cascades has grown most in relative terms, now ranking number 4 in North America, followed by SCA and Kruger, both of which have also grown in importance as suppliers. Fragmentation is likely to continue, said Uutela, as the relatively good profitability of the tissue business has attracted numerous new entrepreneurs to the industry.
WHERE GOES TAD?
Looking at production technology, Uutela said that high energy needs and related costs are the Achilles‘ heel of TAD technology. In Europe, where energy costs are relatively high, TAD products have experienced a surprisingly moderate success. Even in North America the number of new TAD tissue machines installed seems to be in decline, with nine being built during 2001-05, only six expected in 2006-10 and a trend suggesting there will be only three in 2011-15.
However, the main consumer tissue sector suppliers – P&G, K-C and G-P for brands, as well as Potlatch and First Quality for retailer labels – are pushing TAD and the high quality it offers. Thus, a return to conventional tissue would mean lower quality and the main players are unlikely to want this, as it could mean loss of market share.
This apparently bodes well for the new concepts for manufacturing structured tissue with nearly similar characteristics to TAD, such as ATMOS, STT, or other innovations that are reported to be coming. Although these have not yet found big support, perhaps they will soon, said Uutela.
CARBON FOOTPRINT LABELING
The second speech of the opening session, presented by Roland McKinney of UK-based Fibre Research Consultants, spotlighted the tricky issue of Carbon Footprint Labeling and how it might impact tissue products.
“Clearly it is a question of when, and not if, [this] will come to tissue,” said McKinney. The UK has been the leader in the use of carbon footprint labels which were launched in April 2007 when the first consumer product, potato chips, carried on its wrapping bag the estimated carbon dioxide emissions arising from making the product.
Numerous consumer product manufacturers, including Cadbury, PepsiCo and Timberland, have stated their intent to follow this example. In addition to producers, major retailers such as Boots and Tesco (in the UK) and Wal-Mart (USA) have indicated that they plan to introduce carbon labels for all the products on their shelves.
However, said McKinney, carbon labeling is far from simple as methodologies and calculations will be open to dispute, as they are in life cycle analysis and eco-labels. Currently, there are no national or international standards, though in the UK the Carbon Trust, a UK government-sponsored body, is attempting to establish a common methodology that they expect to apply across thousands of products.
Tesco, the UK’s largest supermarket chain, has pledged to donate $10 million to develop a methodology to calculate the carbon footprint for products on its shelves. It has also introduced an ambitious environmental program, committing to reduce packaging waste by 25% (base year 2006) by 2010, as well as a 50% reduction in energy use. By the end of 2007 a wide range of consumer products, ranging from potato chips to wine, had already produced carbon footprint information on their labels, and it will not be possible for tissue producers to avoid these initiatives. How this information will influence consumer buying patterns remains to be seen, but it is highly likely that there will be losers and winners, at least in the short to medium term, concluded McKinney.
TECHNICAL SESSIONS
The technical sessions covered diverse tissue topics under the headings: Papermaking Developments; Softness, Strength and Surface Treatment; Converting, Packaging, Wrapping and Logistics; Stock Prep and Pulping; and Process Control and Testing. Overall the quality of the technical papers was very good, with some better than others in terms of news value and technical advances but most delegates agreed that the content was very informative and worthwhile. While it is impossible to review all of them here, some of the highlights are presented. Most sessions were followed by a good question and answer period.
A key challenge facing all tissue makers today is energy costs and this point was mentioned in the majority of the papers, giving tips and methods for reducing energy consumption. Obviously the industry is hard at work on this issue and it is receiving a lot of attention.
The first technical paper covered one of the biggest developments in tissue making in the past two years, the ATMOS process from Voith which can make TADlike tissue with 30-35% lower energy input. A combined paper from Thomas Scherb of Voith, Brazil, and CMPC in Chile, where the first commercial machine is installed, gave an update on the ATMOS machine there.
Carlos Hirigoyen of CMPC said that the ATMOS project has been a success with product quality equal to that of TAD tissue and indistinguishable from commercially available TAD products. Operating rates have been higher than expected and energy consumption is on guarantee. Runnability and rejects are similar to conventional mode operation. In addition, Hirigoyen said, the changeover to swing from conventional operation to ATMOS takes only a few hours as promised.
Other papers covering energy reduction in this session included one on yankee drying for optimum energy usage by Ingvar Klerelid of Metso Paper as well as another on Improved drying efficiency via yankee hood management by Dominique Thifault of Enerquin Air, Canada. A presentation by Joerg Bauböck of Andritz, Austria, on the application of steel yankee dryers highlighted the energy savings or higher production that steel offers, as well as improved safety due to the elasticity of the steel.
A brief talk by Ed Graf of APM on the topic of air dried tissue - a new concept in tissue manufacturing was given with the idea being to use air flotation drying sections instead of a yankee or through air dryer to get lower capital cost and energy savings. It must be said the technology is still in very early stages so there is a lot of work to be done before commercialisation but the concept seems worth exploring.
The complex issue of softness was the main subject for the second session with a paper by Wes McConnell of Indonesia’s Asia Pulp and Paper trying to answer the question: softness – do customers really know what they want? Other related papers included a new measuring principle for softness evaluation by Giselher Gruener from Emtec Electronic, Germany and one on the assessment of tissue softness using ultrasonic technology by Kerin Lester of SoniSys Inc., USA.
The third session addressed the topics of converting, packaging, wrapping and logistics, with Guido Finoccki of Fabio Perini, Italy suggesting some of the converting line solutions that have been developed to give both quantity and quality without having to compromise one or the other.
Lorenzo Trimigno, from Tissue Excellence Center, USA talked about advances in modern maintenance planning methods on packaging lines and how modern tools like on-machine diagnostics can be used for successful predictive maintenance, thereby improving overall efficiency.
Massimo Grandi, from KPL Packaging, Italy, spoke about the future of tissue packaging and presented the advantages offered by the new Casmatic CUBE, allowing wrapping of three-layer roll packs for greater flexibility for both marketing and logistics.
Session 4 on Thursday morning on stock prep and pulping took an indepth look at new ideas and technology to get the most out of the valuable fiber raw material being put into the process.
Jon Kerr of Andritz presented novel solutions based on a simple short flow stock system which can save space as well as energy and capital, at the same time as it speeds up grade changes and improves control. This was followed by a paper given by Marco Pescantin from Comer in Italy about the modular deinking technology that has been installed at Saudi Paper’s tissue mill in Saudi Arabia.
Rosy Covarrubias at Buckman Laboratories, USA, talked on using enzymes to modify fibres for increase production and decreased energy usage. The enzymes degrade cellulose in a manner that makes refining easier and increases bonding. She said that interest has grown greatly in the past two years and now 11 mills around the world are using this method, up from two in 2006 (see article starting on page 27). The session also included a good paper by Len Dewhurst of Algas, Norway, about saving water, fiber and energy through selective uses of micro-filters throughout the mill.
The conference was concluded with Session 5, which comprised six good papers, mainly on process control and covering the advances that have been made in that area. Tom Steele from Honeywell spoke about new quality measurement and control solutions that have been tailored specifically to the demanding tissue application all down the tissue machine. New designs in tissue machines have placed higher demands and tighter space requirements on all process control measuring systems, said Steele. Jason Box, from the SCA Barton mill and Ray Trudeau of Monitoring Technology Corp gave a good demonstration of the use of high speed digital video systems in converting operations.
Finally, Ian Lang of Asten Hill presented an interesting testing method for TAD fabrics which allows rapid testing and evaluation to verify key performance parameters at a fraction of the cost of full scale pilot trials.
All told, the conference was seen as a big success with participants pleased with the exchange of ideas.
NEXT EVENT IN 2010
The next Tissue World Americas will take place on March 23-26, 2010 at the Miami Beach Convention Center. For the conference, the call for papers will be issued in mid-2009 and interested speakers are encouraged to submit abstracts. For the exhibition, initial bookings for stands are now being taken with many of this year’s exhibitors already signed up for their stands. Suppliers should make bookings now to ensure a prime location at the 2010 event.
For more information or to purchase copies of the proceedings, contact Eileen Tan at eileen_tan@cmpasia.com.sg or visit www.tissueworld.com.
