By Martin Bayliss
Over the past year, three themes have dominated coverage in Tissue World magazine. They are innovation, energy, and the environment. All three are again well represented in this month's issue.
Our cover feature this month is a profile of Fabio Perini, one of the most influential men in the tissue business in the past 50 years. Our cover line, “innovatore straordinario”, identifies the single most important trait that has made him such a success not only in the tissue business but in boat building and his other enterprises.
As our article makes clear, one of Perini's strengths has been his willingness to challenge the conventional view and to press ahead with revolutionary ideas against all advice. Of course, challenging tradition is in itself not enough. You have to be right. Perini has been and it has brought him outstanding success. This is innovation in its purest form.
We also report in this issue on another innovation which could have far-reaching consequences for the industry. This is Voith’s ATMOS technology, which has now successfully completed three trial runs at CMPC’s mill in Talagante, Chile. This is one of the very few important technical innovations in the industry in the past few years. ATMOS is perhaps not revolutionary. The advantages of a structured sheet have been clear for decades. What Voith has done, however, is to create a new and lower-cost way of producing that structured sheet.
The energy cost saving achieved with ATMOS is striking. First, compared to TAD. Voith claims that ATMOS tissue costs 35% less in total consumables than TAD (energy, clothing, chemicals). But experience at CMPC has also shown a sharp reduction in energy consumption over the trial runs that have so far taken place: from run 2 to run 3 total consumption fell from 4500 kWh/ton to 3725 kWh/ton when making 19 g/m2 paper.
Rising energy costs could have positive and negative effects on the new technology. In the newly developed countries the growing energy-cost gap between dry crepe and ATMOS could be a deterrent to investors. On the other hand, markets where TAD is strong could be more strongly encouraged to switch to ATMOS.
There is a third innovation on display in this magazine, Blow ‘n Throw tissue hanky disposal units which are built in to the tissue box itself. Not exactly a revolutionary development but one which provokes a reaction common after the act: why didn't someone think of it before?
Unfortunately, in our industry, all too often so-called innovation is nothing of the sort, just a new slant on existing products designed to encourage sales. Whatever they may say about their commitment to innovation, most large companies simply have not got the right culture or leadership.
The success of Fabio Perini is that of the entrepreneur-inventor who was able, as an independent running his own business, to do as he chose, even if the rest of the world thought he was crazy. Such an approach is not feasible in KC, P&G or SCA. The men running these huge companies are not inventors but organisation men, usually from accounting or marketing backgrounds. To them new ideas are not the blood of life, as they are for Perini, but frightening monsters that cannot be controlled and can be expensive failures to be explained to investors and board members.
In our November issue, Tissue World wrote at length about environmental issues. We reported on a Greenpeace survey that claimed UK retailers were ‘trashing’ the environment and we criticised the organisation for its black-and-white approach to the environment, and particularly its one-eyed attitude to forestry issues.
To some, new ideas are not the blood of life, but frightening monsters that cannot be controlled and can be expensive failures to be explained to investors and board members
In this issue Södra Cell president Sten Holmberg condemns what he calls 'FSC or bust '. Holmberg believes that there is little to be gained – and possibly much to be lost – by allowing a monopoly forest certification scheme to be created.
“Something is happening in the UK in the name of forest certification which we think has little to do with sustainability but everything to do with perception and nothing to do with freedom of choice . . . the growing recognition of the FSC logo on products has less to do with its environmental superiority over PEFC and more to do with the fact that FSC has been much better marketed than PEFC.“
Environment is obviously important to tissue consumers, too. Three of the four western consumers we have interviewed in these pages have mentioned environmental issues among their criteria for buying tissue. They may not always be well informed but they are a growing army that has to be humoured if it cannot be educated.
Radical innovation à la Perini will no doubt remain a rare occurrence in the year ahead. No doubt there will be claims that revolution is in the air but this year, as for many past, such claims will be more hot air than solid achievement. But environment and energy will no doubt be in the headlines more than once in the months ahead. TW
