4-steps to resource efficiency: Maintain improved levels, invest in new technologies, and continuously develop your performance

In our previous articles about resource efficiency development, we have identified four steps that, in collaboration with our customers, enable us to improve their production line’s resource use. This means reducing energy, water, and raw material consumption and improving production efficiencies, all leading to significant cost savings and sustainability improvement.

Having completed the first three steps, we’ve benchmarked where we currently stand in terms of resource efficiency and quantified where the improvement potential lies and how big it is, and the actions we should take. We’ve implemented the easiest short-term actions and optimized our current production equipment and processes. After we’ve reached our achievable limit with the current production setup, it’s time to consider longer-term development actions, ensure the improved efficiency level is maintained, and invest in the most efficient modern solutions.

Figure 1. The four steps to improved resource efficiency.

1. The first step on this route is specific benchmarking. Benchmarking provides you with goalsetting data for the next steps.
2. The second step is quantifying variabilities, which means identifying your entire production line’s variations. This enables you to discover the peak resource consumption sources, detailed improvement scope, and optimization potential.
3. The third step is the execution of optimization. Valmet offers agreements, tools, and digitalization concepts for reducing variations and improving resource efficiency within the scope determined in the previous step.
4. The fourth and final step is investing in new technologies and sustaining the improved efficiency level. Following these steps to resource efficiency opens a new insight into new technology, revealing what you really need – and when.

These four steps provide you with a continuous development roadmap from knowing where you are, what you can improve, by how much, and through which actions. Improvement actions target the most crucial process sections to save energy, water, and raw materials, improve the mill’s runnability and availability, develop time and material efficiencies – all of which leads to better sustainability.

Continuous long-term development work brings best results

After the previous steps, we’ve arrived at the point where we’ve implemented the short-term development actions in our current production process. So we need to consider something else if we want to achieve the highest improvement potential. At the same time, we need to ensure that we maintain our current improved resource efficiency level and avoid backward steps and falling into our old ways. We can achieve this with continuous development agreements with Valmet and by investing in our technologies that offer the best achievable performance for our customers.

It’s also highly beneficial to discover these bigger improvement actions in our previous steps when analyzing the customer’s development potential – where it is, what the impact is, and what should be done to gain from it. It’s also feasible to first optimize the existing process and reclaim its full potential before taking bigger steps. And these points are precisely what Valmet’s approach provides.

R&D plays a highly important role in all Valmet’s operations, and we’re therefore constantly innovating technologies and improving our existing ones. Innovations such as the Valmet Sleeve Roll forming technology are proof of the long and ambitious work we’ve done to create a solution for improved production, quality, and resource efficiency without compromises. In 2023, Valmet R&D employed 551 people, and the company spent EUR 114 million on R&D to help our customers get better results.

Valmet’s technological solutions at the center

Valmet’s service agreements ensure the production line is always in top condition, Valmet specialists closely monitor the most crucial KPIs, and actions are taken immediately if something seems off. These agreements can include maintenance professionals working during shutdowns, dedicated spare parts for critical process equipment, roll services, tailor-made audits and studies for troubleshooting and process development, and remote assist and on-demand support. The service agreement is always built around the customer’s targets and goals, and how  we can achieve them most efficiently together, without compromising on anything else like product quality or cost-competitiveness. We thus act as one team with our customers, with the common goal of ensuring their performance development.

Continuous development roadmap with Valmet

Investing in Valmet’s technology solutions will ensure that you’re relying on the best available technologies in maximizing your resource and production efficiencies. Numerous references from successful modernization, rebuild, new process technology adaptation, and greenfield machine line projects also tell Valmet’s story in delivering performance, not just process equipment. These projects take planning and engineering, and therefore time and capital. They are implemented in the customer’s longer-term development roadmaps and investment planning.

For example, investment payback times are often extremely attractive when we consider Valmet’s hood ventilation and heat recovery optimization with modern technology and control systems. This is also the case when thinking about rebuilding the stock preparation cleaning process with the latest Valmet technology to match current standards for minimizing water use and raw material reject rates. And it applies to the Valmet Dilution Retrofit for the headbox and the Valmet Breast Roll Shaker for the forming section. All this gives a tremendous boost to quality, production, and raw material efficiencies. Time and material efficiency improvement generate massive savings and production increases, which can be ensured with Valmet’s top-of-the-line break detection and break recovering systems. This includes our tail threading applications for all production lines and grades, giving speedy recoveries from downtime, and minimizing time and material losses during production stops.

Benefits of digitalization in papermaking

Valmet Industrial Internet applications provide state-of-the art solutions for advancing our customers’ digitalization level, and giving them critical assistance and knowledge about process conditions and actions which would otherwise be left uncovered. All these applications drive the production towards more sustainable and cost-effective operation. For example, the Valmet Cost Monitoring application gives a real-time overview of resource consumption and follows it based on grade-specific targets, showing where improvements are required. Valmet Centerline Advisor tells the customer where their process and quality parameters are compared to a selected benchmark situation, and how they should operate to match this. Valmet Advanced Process Controls offer higher-level new automation control solutions to the customer’s system to handle large process areas, targeting better resource and production efficiencies, and independently controlling them without needing operator assistance.

The above examples are just a few highlights of what Valmet’s various solutions can do, and we’re constantly expanding the number of solutions and improving the existing ones. Our actions and solutions are leading the entire industry towards improved resource consumption, production efficiencies, and product quality, as well as better sustainability. All this is part of Valmet’s everyday work, with demonstrated success, various reference cases, and satisfied customer stories – we’re committed to moving our customers’ performance forward together and bringing this continuous development into real-life actions to improve paper- and boardmaking resource efficiency and sustainability.

Text: Paavo Hirvonen