Voith has completed an upgrade of the stock preparation at Newark Recycled Paperboard Solutions (Newark America) in Fitchburg, Massachusetts, reducing production cost and boosting efficiency in the process. As a result of the upgrades, the facility can now use OCC (Old Corrugated Containers) instead of less contaminated recycled board as a raw material for the production of high quality linerboard. In addition, the upgrade ensures minimal fiber loss during the production process.
“We are very pleased with the upgrade at our Fitchburg facility”, said Barry Jensen, Vice President Newark Recycled Paperboard Solutions. “The upgrade process went according to plan and the startup was the smoothest we have encountered, which is even more impressive considering complexity of the project. Within a few hours of pressing the start button, the plant was supplying the machine with quality fiber at design capacity. The upgrade project has met all the quality objectives, and power consumption is lower than expected.”
The main upgrade consisted of improving the current pulper detrashing loop using Voith’s IntensaMaxx. IntensaMaXX prevents tail formation and spinning so that even content with high levels of contaminant can be easily processed. Another advantage of IntensaMaXX is its low energy consumption. IntensaMaXX can be used in continuous low consistency (LC) pulping with recovered paper grades containing contaminants or in high consistency (HC) pulping as a dumping machine after the batch HC pulper.
In addition, Newark Fitchburg upgraded a multi-stage fine cleaning system with Voith’s unique HCL5C cleaner with HW and LW removal combination, while adding a three stage fine screening upgrade with the C-bar screen basket. These upgrades included a new third stage MultiMizer with optimum slots configuration for a fiber savings final stage screening concept.
The HCL5C technology is a multi-stage system for cleaning fiber suspensions. It removes heavy weight and light weight contaminants in the stock preparation and approach flow systems. The C-bar screen basket is used in stock preparation and approach flow and can be used for increasing the capacity of existing pressure screens. It has a large open screening area with high slot width precision, providing up to 20% more capacity than conventional screen baskets. The MultiMizer improves the overall system performance and provides cost savings by reducing the amount of flakes in the reject stream of the fine slotted screening system.
Newark, originally The Newark Group, was founded in 1912. In 2013, Newark became Newark Recycled Paperboard Solutions. The company was rebranded to better reflect the upward direction that the company was taking. They are the largest open-market sellers of recycled paperboard in North America. Newark operates six mills that produce over 450,000 metric tons of 100% recycled paperboard annually.