Valmet Clothing Days: Towards more sustainable papermaking
Dec 30, 2022
Valmet’s traditional Clothing Days were organized in Tampere, Finland, for the 15th time in October 2022. In addition to a full-day seminar with interesting presentations on paper machine clothing trends and customer success stories, the participants had the chance to mingle in social events and visit Fabrics’ local production facility.
The theme of this year’s Clothing Days was “Towards more sustainable papermaking”. At Valmet, it has been estimated that around 95 percent of our value chain's environmental impact is caused when customers use our technologies over their life cycles. In our climate program, we have set ambitious targets to enable 100 percent carbon neutral production for all our customers and to improve the energy efficiency of our current offering by 20 percent by 2030.
When it comes to paper machine clothing development, sustainability has been the key driver already for a long time as we have pursued energy efficiency, material efficiency and extended lifetime targets in all our product groups.
Today, also our production side streams are collected, sold and reused, and excess fibers in felt manufacturing are recycled to our own products,” Viivi Villa-Nuottajärvi, Director, Internal Beyond Circularity program at Valmet, says in her presentation.
Beyond Circularity is Valmet’s new internal R&D and innovation project program that improves Valmet’s readiness to support the green transition in Valmet’s customer industries and supports the implementation of Valmet’s Climate program.
Search for more sustainable raw materials continues
According to Viivi the biggest challenge still lies in the availability of sustainable raw materials, whether recycled or biobased, as they need to meet the extreme quality requirements and also be an economically reasonable option.
“However, our Textile Recycling project members and New Materials team are working hard to find suitable solutions, and as an example I can tell that partially biobased polyamides are already in use in our press felt manufacturing. Our goal is to not less than have renewable raw materials replace crude oil-based materials in selected fabrics by 2025”, she tells.
Latest trends in Valmet’s paper machine clothing
Among Clothing Days’ speakers was a full line of Valmet’s product managers, who discussed the latest trends in paper machine clothing development and presented numerous successful cases with selected customers.
Product Manager Marko Vesanen says that as papermakers have responded to the growing demand for carton and container board with new high-speed machine lines, it has also required a new approach for press felt designs.
Our new EMX M press felt combines the proven modular structure with a smooth surface finishing – being a perfect choice for machines producing high-quality, printable carton and container board.
The modular structure with two or three base fabrics enables easy adjustability and brings along excellent dewatering capacity as well as durability for a long lifetime. At the same time, the smooth surface component provides a non-marking quality that meets the customer demands. The feedback so far has been very good, and we have estimated the production of the new EMX M will increase rapidly during the next years”, Marko says.
“And when it comes to sustainability, we can use a special life cycle assessment tool to calculate the CO2 footprint of our products – leading to easy estimation of positive environmental impact of changing raw material components to more sustainable options in the future”, Viivi Villa-Nuottajärvi reminds.
Clothing Days is Valmet’s bi-annual customer seminar. This year around 150 customers and Valmeteers from 24 countries participated in the event. If you missed it, you are warmly welcome next time!
Presentations at Valmet Clothing Days 2022:
Sustainability as a driver for paper industry demand, Outi Juntti, Partner, JAY Partners
Continuous collaboration and sustainability over the process lifecycle, Aki Niemi, Business Line President, Valmet
Sleeve roll technology PM5 Aalen, Florian Schmid, Project Technology Manager, Papierfabrik Palm
Forming fabric technology to meet future board and paper making requirements, Hannu Martikainen, Product Manager, Valmet
PM19 success story, Lubomir Liska, Production Manager, Mondi Ruzomberok
New modular press felt designs improve runnability and efficiency, Marko Vesanen, Product Manager, Valmet
Towards more sustainable paper machine clothing, Viivi Villa-Nuottajärvi, Director, Internal Beyond Circularity program, Valmet
Solving edge problems in the press section, Tero Ylikoski, Senior Manager, Valmet
Sustainability as a business model, Henri Kröling, Production Manager, Steinbeis Papier
Energy efficient dewatering with Valmet Black Belt, Janne Honkanen, Product Manager & Arsi Nikkinen, Product Manager, Valmet
New technologies in board and paper machines, Arto Välikangas, Senior Paper Technology Manager, Valmet:
Valmet’s dryer fabric portfolio and the new production facility, Petri Nieminen, Product Manager, Valmet
Latest developments in eucalyptus based kraftliner products (Eukaliner®), case: KLABIN Puma II, Matti Lares, Senior Technology Manager, Valmet
Improving machine runnability by combining digitalization and traditional PMC technical service, Lasse Janhunen, Product Manager, Valmet