Analysis

Although there are century long histories on using nonwood plant Fibres in papermaking, especially in hand papermaking, the use of such fibres at present worldwide is only 5.5% of the total fibres in a world production of about 315 mio tons.

Woodbased pulps are preferred not because these fibres have better papermaking, characteristics, but they are more economical to procduce. Especially the harvesting and transportation costs for wood are lower than for nonwood plant materials. To decide whether a nonwood pulp and paper project is economically and environmentally sound and studies from the cradle to the grave should be carried out.

Here are some questions which have to be answered honestly.

Is the supply of fibre raw material secured?
What are the fibre prices and the transportation costs?
Will there be an uniform and clean pulp production possible?

There were some recent big studies to determine whether nonwood pulp production in countries like Canada (Paprican, wheat straw) and Finland (Jaako Pöry, canary reeds) are viable.(12, 13, 14, 15,16)

The studies revealed the great difficulties:

• in finding sufficient uniform, clean raw materials for bigger mills (100 000 tons/year)

• in storing huge amounts of such materials,

• in cleaning ;washing, chopping of such materials before they are fed into the digesters

• in designing highly efficient chemical recovery units

Often the pulping of nonwood fibre material is easy but the resulting pulps are often unsuitable due to their poor dewatering characteristics in high speed paper production Therefore they often have their niche markets in special paper production.  Today straw pulps must be cheaper than processed recovered papers in certain paper grades, e.g. corrugating medium Bagasse pulps must be price competive with hardwood pulps But will this be possible when the fuel replacement value for market bagasse is so high at present?

It is my opinion that worldwide the chances for new Nonwoody plant fibre pulp and paper mills are smaller than ever and the present production of about 17.1 mio tons will be a maximum for some time to come.

1. "Das Buch vom Papier", Armin Renke, Insel-Verlag

2. "Papermaking" von Dard Hunter Alfred A. Knopf. Inc., 1943

3. PPI, Annual Review, July, 2000.

4. "FAO, Pulp and Paper Capacities, 1994-1999 and 1999-2004 and 1998-2003

5. PPI, Annual Review, July, 1989 - 2000

6. "Nonwood Applications in Papermaking" by Graham Moore, PIRA publication

7. J.E. Atchison: Update on global Use of Non-wood Plant Fiber and some prospects for their greater use In The United States, North American Nonwood Fiber Symposium,TAPPI, Feb. 17-18 1998, page 15 - 42

8. James S. Hahn, (USDA FS - Forest Product Laboratory) "Fibre Property Comparison", 1998, TAPPI, North American Nonwood Fibre Symposium, Febr. page 77 - 85 Esau, K., Anatomy of seed plants, Second edition, John Wiley, New York, N.Y. (1977) Han, J.s. and J.S. Rowell, Chemical composition of fibers, Lewis Publishers, Boca Raton, Fl. (1997 )

9. McGovern,Tappi 1975, 58 (1), 82 - 86

10. Ivessalo-Pfaffli, M.-S. Fiber atlas, Springer-Verlag, Berlin, Germany, ( 1995)

11. Marianne Harders-Steinhäuser, Faseratlas, Güntter Staib Verlag, Biberach, (1974 )

12. L. Paavilainen, "Modern Non-Wood Pulp Mill - Process Concepts and Economic Aspects", North American Nonwood Fiber Symposium, TAPPI, Feb. 17-18 1998, page 227

13. Paul Watson and Andrew Garner, "The Opportunities for Producing Pulp from Agricultural Residues in Alberta", Paprican, Miscellaneous Report, May 1997

14. "A Cradle to Gate - Life Cycle Assessment of Straw Incorporation Units Telephone Directora - grade paper"; Paul Watson and others, TAPPI Vol. 82, No. 2, page 115 ff

15. Jaako Pöry, Report V-91-MZ-0488, Prefeasibility Study for Straw Based Pulp Mill, funded by Agriculture Development Fund Saskatchewan, June 1991

16. M.F. Davy and K.M. Thompson, "Pulp and Paper Mill Capital Costs (1972 - 1993) -  Canada USA", Paprican Miscellaneous Report 286.

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