Norske Skog Skogn invests in employee safety

Norske Skog operates five paper mills in four countries and produces over 2 million tonnes of publication and packaging paper each year. The Skogn mill in Norway was founded in 1962 and is today one of the largest newsprint mills in Europe with the annual production capacity of around 500 000 tonnes.

Valmet proposes a customized solution for drying section rebuild

A few years ago, the Skogn mill underwent a generational handover with many experienced machine operators distributing their know-how to their younger colleagues. During that time, it was noticed that the operators continuously spend time cleaning and handling the paper web at the PM2 drying section, creating a severe safety risk for them.

“The design between the 4^th and 5^th drying group was far from optimal, and we had some challenges with web breaks and paper getting stuck in that area. As a result, the operators had to clean the area regularly and manually handle the paper web to get production back on track. Besides being a safety risk for our employees, the situation cost us lost production time,” recalls Terje Fiborg, PM2´s Operations Engineer at Norske Skog Skogn.

Picture from the driveside where we had to make manual cleaning inside machine to remove paper.

Image from tender side, where we had a rope pulley that made it difficult to remove paper. 

Having successfully cooperated with Valmet for years, Norske Skog Skogn contacted Valmet for a solution that both improves safety and increases production efficiency.

“After discussing the challenges with Skogn, we presented a customized solution for drying section rebuild. After some further optimization together with the customer, we decided to close the web transfer between drying group 4 & 5 and install a Valmet Web Stabilizer UR leading to opening up the area between the two dryer groups – something that we had already conducted previously one dryer group split downstream in the same drying section,” explains Peter Lindgren, Mill Sales Manager at Valmet.

Good cooperation leads to good results

As a result of the rebuild conducted by Valmet in 2022, Norske Skog Skogn improves the safety of its employees by creating more open area in the drying section while also increasing the production efficiency through simpler web threading.

At Norske Skog Skogn, we are very satisfied with Valmet’s dynamic and flexible attitude and their capability of implementing the drying section rebuild together with our team, Terje Fiborg says.