By Timo Teräs - Leading Advisor, Pöyry Forest Industry Consulting
The growth rate of paper and paperboard demand and production
is slowing down but annual volume growth remains relatively stable long-term. In tissue paper production the global volume increase has speeded up since 2000 as per capita income in key populous countries has reached a level that has sharply boosted tissue paper consumption growth.
In market bleached hardwood kraft pulp volume growth has been even more impressive, especially for Latin American production of market BHKP. A fair part of this growth is explained by the rapidly growing use of BHKP market pulp in tissue paper production around the world.
HISTORY AND OUTLOOK
First, let us take a brief glimpse into the history. Back in the 1950s early
1960s, few people in our industry believed in the future of hardwood
pulp in general and hardwood market pulp in particular. During the 1960s,
understanding over the properties of hardwood pulp grew and, with it,
hardwood pulps started to be used in various grades of paper and paperboard,
first in a small way but gradually in growing volumes.
At that time, strength was still the predominant pulp characteristic.
Among hardwood pulps, birch was stronger than eucalyptus. Consequently,
through the 1970s and early 1980s, it was also priced above eucalyptus.
One reason was the superior strength of birch pulp. The other reason was
the drying technology. Part of the first eucalyptus kraft pulp was flash
dried, which posed technical problems for some of the pulp buyers.
The first internationally sold Brazilian eucalyptus kraft pulp came from
Riocell. As the mill could not bleach all of the production, some of it was
delivered unbleached to Norway, bleached there and sold under the brand
name Unicell. From the very beginning, part of Riocell/Unicell sales was
targeted to tissue producers.
In the late 1970s, two large market pulp production units were built
in Brazil: Aracruz and Cenibra. In the 1980s and 1990s, new mills were
built and new producers of market eucalyptus pulp were introduced, such
as Jari, Suzano and Votorantim in Brazil and Arauco, CMPC and Santa
Fe in Chile.
Foreign companies became interested in Latin American BHKP from
an early stage. To name just some of them: the Japanese were the first
part-owners and are now full owners of Cenibra. American industrialist
Daniel Ludwig was the financier behind the Jari pulp mill, which was
built on barges in Japan and floated up the Amazon
river. Shell and UPM were involved in plantations
which were used at Santa Fe. In the early 2000s,
Stora Enso joined forces with Aracruz to build the
new Veracel mill.
Improved knowledge and new pape
machine technology allowed the increase of the
share of BHKP in the furnish of virtually all the
printing and writing papers, tissues, cartonboards
and speciality papers. Strength was no longer the
number one quality criterion. Bulk, opacity and
other printing properties became predominant in
printing papers. In many tissue products, softness,
along with bulk, became the key quality features,
obtained by an increased use of BHKP.
The closures of old sulphite mills, both
softwood and hardwood, profited BHKP. Bleached
softwood had for decades been the most important
grade of market pulp in terms of volume. In 2005,
BHKP became the biggest individual market pulp
grade. And, within BHKP, eucalyptus had already
become the largest sub-grade.
Chart 2 shows the estimated breakdown of market pulp consumption
by grade in 2008. Eucalyptus pulp is shown separately from other BHKP.
The volume shown for euca is for pure eucalyptus pulp only. In addition,
the so-called mixed hardwood BHKP often includes a share of eucalyptus
in the fibre mix, particularly in Japan where most of the BHKP production
is now based on imported wood, mainly from Australia.
The newest BHKP pulp mills are in Latin America, Indonesia and
China (Chart 3). The average size of the assets in the emerging countries
is also clearly larger than in the traditional producing areas of BHKP,
Western Europe and North America. Supported also by the fast-growing
plantations with homogeneous high quality fibre
and low wood costs, it is no wonder that the
production capacity of market BHKP is shrinking
in Western Europe and North America while new
assets are being added elsewhere, mainly in Latin
America. The present overcapacity, coupled with
the financial crisis, has postponed the construction
of new assets everywhere in the world, including
Latin America, and speeded up the closures of old,
small units.
TISSUE PAPER IN THE GLOBAL CONTEXT
Global consumption of tissue paper is close
to 30 million metric tons. This represents about
7% of total global paper and paperboard
consumption (Chart 4). Tissue is currently the
fastest growing
major grade of
paper. It will hold
that rank for the next
20 years. Cyclicality
of the world
economy has an
impact on tissue
paper consumption
but much less than on other key grades of paper.
There are two main drivers for tissue
consumption growth: population; and per capita
consumption. Though tissue consumption is not
very sensitive to cyclical variations in the economy,
it grows faster with higher economic growth, and
this impact is most evident in developing countries.
Average per capita consumption continues to
rise. Not much change is seen in the industrialized
world but in the developing world very large masses
are shifting towards high income categories. This
means that major increases in consumption continue
to be seen in China, India, Indonesia, Turkey,
Brazil and other such heavily populated developing
nations. In the table, the difference between annual
growth rates is explained by the growth in the
global population.
TISSUE BRAZIL
The types of tissue paper used in a country or region depend on a
number of drivers. One key driver is the income level. Both the per capita
consumption of tissue paper per se and the quality of those products rise
with the income level. But, while important, that is by no means the only
significant consumption driver. There are significant differences between
the countries which are at the same income level, due to national customs,
life-styles, religious beliefs, age, sex, product availability, price and a score of other consumption drivers. An oil-rig worker in Norway, fashion magazine editor in Florida and a doctor in pension in Japan may all have the same income level but they would probably prefer very different types of toilet paper. A bachelor harvester operator working in Eastern Finlandwould not buy pink, scented, ultra-soft, three-ply toilet tissue used in some fancy romantic hotel rooms in holiday resorts.
The tissue supply in a given country has an impact on the consumption patterns and rates of that country - and vice versa. In my youth in Finland we used brown toilet paper, glazed on one side. The products today look, fortunately, very different and are much better suited to their end use.
Consumption of tissue in Europe and other industrial countries has been often discussed in the pages of this magazine. This time, let us use Brazil as a bit of case-study to show how the tissue paper consumption in a developing country breaks down between different social classes and between the producers of tissue paper.
Chart 5 illustrates the consumption pattern of tissue paper in Brazil. The lowest social class, with income of less than $200/month, consumes no tissue paper, except for some standard toilet tissue, while people with over $4000/month typically consume the most expensive products which represent about 15% of the total tissue production.
On the production side, three big producers, regional or global, concentrate their production in the higher quality products, but they also participate in the AfH sector. Mediumsize players operate in the middle with some sales up and down market. Small local producers use mainly recovered paper raw-material and produce standard single layer toilet paper and other lower quality consumer and AfH-products.
WHY BHK PIN TISSUE?
Early in the 1970s eucalyptus pulp established its place as a market
pulp and European customers soon realised the advantage of dried eucalyptus
pulp as tissue paper raw material, since drying of pulp has very good
impact on the tissue quality ie water retention, fibre bonding and fibre
collapsibility.
Today, with genetic development, hybridization and cloning, it is possible to develop eucalyptus fibres to specifically increase final product quality. Still there are properties that are 100% dependent on the wood quality that pulping and papermaking processes cannot modify, such as fibre length, wall thickness, vessel dimensions, etc. Some of the most important pulp properties are related both to wood quality and pulp production process,
eg pulp hemicellulose content and microfibril organization in the cell wall.
In some properties the wood is not the main factor to determine these pulp
qualities for paper ie WRV - water retention value, WWS - wet web
strength, WFF - wet fibre flexibility, fibre bonding and individual fibre
strength, and these properties can be controlled by the pulp production
process.
Desired properties of tissue paper are softness, smoothness, absorption,
fluffiness, bulk, strength and tactility. Sheet structure needs to be open,
loose and porous, favouring drainage in the wet end. Fibres with these
properties are typically thick-walled and associated to denser woods. The
most indicated eucalyptus pulps for tissue are those showing: low fibre
population and consequently high coarseness, low fines, and vessel elements
contents, low bonding ability, low fibre collapsibility, low wet fibre
flexibility, low hemicellulose content, low extractives and pitch content,
low water retention value, thick cell walls, high cell wall fraction, rigid
and cylindrical fibres, and pulps resistant to refining.
Tissue products are made from a very diverse combination of raw
materials. Desired product properties are the main driver when paper
producers make their decisions as to the blend of raw materials used.
Availability and cost of the raw materials is another. Refining (minimal
or none with BHKP), creping, embossing and other ways of treating the
raw materials in the production process at the paper mill or in converting
can also be used to obtain the desired end results.
Tissue papers have a number of quality requirements in relation to
paper specifications and paper machine runnability. The key requirements
include: bulk, softness (structural as well as superficial), absorption (both
absorption speed and the capacity to retain liquid), hydrophilic paper
surface, loosened paper structure, porosity (size and distribution of the
pores), paper strength (wet and dry) both to provide machine runnability
and untroubled use at final consumption, sufficient tensile strength,
sufficient elasticity modulus, capacity to retain the pulps' anatomical
components (fines & vessels) in the paper (prevents excessive dust
generation in producing and converting operations), optimum wet web
and dry strength to enhance machine runnability, fast drainage at the wet
end, and low fines content.
There is no single fibre which would provide the best solution for each
of the requirements listed above. Therefore, most tissue producers end up
blending different fibres. But excessive blending creates technical problems
of its own and, typically, also raises the cost of production. Therefore,
while seeking the best blend, producers at the same time try to minimize
the number of components in the blend as well as the cost. This means
that the use of those raw material qualities which fulfil most of the
requirements for a specific tissue paper product is maximized. A few decades ago, the most commonly used fibre in tissue papers was
long-fibre sulphite. It is still a very good fibre for tissue purposes but the
volumes available as market pulp are limited. After paper machine
technology developed to the point where the importance of strength gave
way to those characteristics which the final end user appreciates, the use
of BHKP in tissue started to grow. BHKP in general - and eucalyptus
BHKP in particular - fulfils well most of the key quality requirements.
There are differences between the different hardwood pulps and there are
also differences between the specific eucalyptus species used in the market
pulp production.
Eucalyptus pulps have low fibre population, providing high coarseness. They have low fines, low bonding and low fibre collapsibility. They also have, together with many other hardwood species, low extractives and pitch content, low water retention value and slow beating development.
Fibres have thick cell walls and high cell wall fraction and fibres are rigid and cylindrical.
This combination of characteristics is desirable in most tissue products.
As probably the most important single element, BHK pulps give the feeling
of softness. Fibre deformations improve the softness as well as bulk,
porosity and absorption. These can be influenced by the fibre selection
process but they can also be artificially created at the pulp mills. It is also
important to treat the fibre in the right way in the paper mill's stock
preparation.
In addition to quality, cost is an important driver for maximizing the
BHKP content. Presently, the price differentials between the pulp grades
favour BHKP usage, but, for how long? Refining energy saving is another
source for furnish cost savings in favour of BHKP.
Different tissue product categories have varying product specifications
and therefore also varying shares of BSKP, BHKP, BCTMP and recovered
paper in their typical furnish solutions. The listing below is only indicative
and just discusses the share between BSKP and BHKP in the 100% virgin
fibre products. It leaves out sulphites and CTMP and it leaves out all the
recovered paper furnish used by many tissue paper producers (internal
broke included in the BSKP number):
• Toilet paper: BHKP 75%/BSKP 25%. In some cases, BHKP content is
already 80-85%
• Facial tissue/handkerchiefs: BHKP 80%/BSKP 20%. Even 100% BHKP
has been used
• Toweling: BHKP 30-40%, BSKP 70-60%
• Napkins: BHKP 60%/BSKP 40%, in some cases even 70/30
• Other: BHKP 60%/BSKP 40%, in some cases up to 65/35
Chart 6 estimates the split of the total fibre used between the different
tissue products in 2007 in the world. It also shows the estimated breakdown
as to the used of BHKP in those tissue grades.
The use of BHKP in tissue can be enhanced in several ways. Pulp
producers can manage the wood supply, select most suitable species or
combinations of species to suit the end-users and differentiate cooking
can be done either in campaigns or, if the producer has more than one line,
concentrate one of the lines to serve the specific needs of tissue producers
and others to streamline production according to the wishes of the producer.
Pulp producers can do tricks to manage fines or fibre deformation.
However, most one-line producers make just one product and sell it to
multiple end users. They find it too costly to differentiate. One reason for
that is that tissue paper producers are considered to be among those who demand largest discounts, partly because of their often large volumes and
partly because they are typically more flexible in their raw material choices
than the printing and writing paper colleagues.
Pulp producers develop - or at least can develop if they so wish - even
better pulps through scientific work at nurseries. Through selection, cloning
or genetic improvement process, fibres can be developed which better suit
specific customer needs. This is a slow and costly process but can, by
2015-2020, lead to an improved generation of eucalyptus kraft market
pulps.
The paper producer paper has a number of tools in his bag to improve
tissue paper products. To begin with, he can, and must, buy the pulps
which best suit his purpose(s). There is a wide selection of products
available. And two years out of three, it is more a buyer's than seller's
market. He also can manage the swelling ability of the furnish as well as
the fines and fibre deformations in stock preparation (typical investment
needed here is a high consistency pulp (shredder), deflaker).
CONCLUSIONS
Hardwood pulps had a slow and hesitant start as raw material for all
kinds of paper. For low basis weight tissue paper, BHKP was for a long
time considered to be "too weak". But, once the first hurdles were cleared,
the use of BHKP market pulp has grown rapidly in a number of end-uses.
One of the fastest changes has been seen in tissue papers, where today's
furnishes of 80-90% hardwood pulp content were not at all visualized 40
years ago.
Eucalyptus pulps, especially those from Latin America, have been the
centrepiece of this development. The combination of their technical
characteristics has met most of customer needs. A continuously growing
proportion of tissue paper consumption will take place in Asia. The fibre
used will be predominantly market pulp, even if integrated production is
growing in China (eg APP on Hainan Island). It is highly likely that
eucalyptus market BHKP will make further inroads.
Total fibre needs of the tissue sector will globally grow by almost 1
million tons/yr. If the share of BHKP continues to grow, as expected,
nearly half of the total raw material growth, or about 400,000 tons/yr, will
be satisfied by market BHKP. We can say, without exaggeration, that
every third new market BHKP mill in the world is built to satisfy the needs
of the tissue sector. It is a eucalyptus pulp mill, typically located into Latin
America.
Furnish optimization, cost and quality-wise, is in the prime interest of
all tissue producers. Pöyry has worked with a number of tissue producers
in helping them to optimize furnish both in fibre selection and stock
preparation as well as in providing input information on pulp price and
quality developments.
Eucalyptus market pulp and tissue paper production met in the late
1960s. They exchanged their engagement rings in the early 1970s and got
married soon thereafter. It took a few years for the newlyweds really to
get to know each other. The first love had been spiced and deepened by
mutual recognition, respect and commitment by the late 1970's. We have
witnessed a happy and long-lasting marriage with no risk of a divorce in
sight.
TW
Happy and lasting marriage
