Customer site visit to SAICA’s mill in Manchester

On June 14, 2016 Valmet arranged a customer site visit to SAICA’s mill in Partington, which is close Manchester in the United Kingdom. The visit was targeted to Valmet’s institutional investors and analysts, and the main purpose of the visit was to get to know Valmet's on-site services operations, mill maintenance outsourcing and key account management. At the same time, the visit offered an excellent possibility to see SAICA’s paper mill in action.

In Partington, SAICA has a state-of-the-art board machine, which is delivered by Valmet and started up in 2012. The machine has an advanced design and the consumption of water and electricity per ton of paper produced is amongst the lowest in the world. With up to 40 percent less water discharge, 50 percent less electricity consumption and 40 percent less heat consumption, SAICA’s paper machine in Partington produces environmentally friendly paper. SAICA’s mill in Partington produces annually 450 thousand tonnes of containerboard from recovered papers. The produced board is used in the manufacturing of recycled corrugated boxes.

Mill maintenance outsourcing is a cooperation concept between the customer and Valmet. With the help of mill maintenance outsourcing the customer does not need to have in-house maintenance personnel and can keep a low maintenance cost level. Instead, Valmet takes the full maintenance responsibility and can develop the processes and give support with specialist knowledge and services. The value for the customer is improved production efficiency and end-product quality, reduced life-cycle costs, less tied capital and smaller risks. The value for Valmet is a stable business volume, additional sales, low investment needs and even better customer relationship and understanding of customer needs.

Key account management is very important for Valmet. It is, in fact, a part of Valmet’s Must-Wins, which are Valmet’s way to implement and achieve the strategy. The target of key account management is to develop long-term relationships with strategic customers. To have a long-term relationship is a ‘win-win’ situation, as it benefits both the customer and Valmet. Valmet gets a better understanding of the customer’s strategy and main business drivers, the customer’s way-to-operate, future plans and projects, and Valmet can therefore more effectively offer solutions and technologies. Through key account management Valmet can better serve the customer with the full offering, support the customer’s investment projects and give the customer access to latest technology and innovations to meet the customer’s needs.

We thank SAICA and all the participants for an interesting visit.