Pulp mill sets production record

Ken Collin

An Auckland pulp and paper mill each year deals with enough waste paper to fill Eden Park to the top of the stands.

Ken Collin, chief executive of the Carter Holt Harvey mill at Penrose, and Craig Forman, chief executive of Fullcircle, the paper collection business that supplies it, like that statistic.

They do not think Aucklanders realise they take paper from the street kerbs at no cost to ratepayers, and pass it to the mill that turns it into paper for cardboard box makers.

If they did not do it, Aucklanders would have to pay $40 a tonne to bury waste paper or export it.

But the statistic of the day is "zero 230".

That is the goal the mill has just achieved: zero work accidents and 230 tonnes of paper produced a day last month.

It was a production record and a world-class performance for a mill of its size and type.

Collin said mills did not have to be huge to be efficient producers.

Carter Holt's biggest pulp and paper mill, Kinleith, near Tokoroa, produces nearly 600,000 tonnes a year of pulp and paper from wood fibre and waste paper.

Penrose takes in 95,000 tonnes of waste paper a year and produces 80,000 tonnes of recycled paper.

Penrose was opened by New Zealand Forest Products in 1982 to produce 20,000 tonnes a year and has been upgraded since.

About $100 million has been invested at the site, which is handily positioned on top of an artesian water bore.

The mill takes in about 90 per cent of the paper Aucklanders put out on their kerbs each year.

Penrose exports about 45 per cent of its output and just under half of the rest goes to Carter Holt Harvey's box making plants.

It also has customers in Asia and the United States.

Kinleith mostly breaks down wood chips and pulp logs into fibre and turns it into high grade linerboard paper used for boxes in horticulture and other industries.

It also takes in about 110,000 tonnes of waste paper to recycle.

Fullcircle collects paper around the country, including from Stewart Island.

The amount available is seasonal and there is usually a glut around Christmas.

Penrose munches old boxes, magazines and newspapers into a pulp and makes them into paper that box makers turn into corrugated cardboard.

Boxes are on average recycled eight times.

The mill is a bit like a cake.

The type and quality of the paper that goes in affects the strength of the paper that comes out.

The machine that breaks the paper down looks like a large mixer churning a grey dough.

A wet mix spread out on wires is pressed and dried continuously until paper appears at the other end of the machine.

Collin said Penrose achieved its record production target without injury because it had an engaged workforce.

The mill employs about 70 people directly and uses the services of many more indirectly.

Goals were clearly telegraphed to everyone at the mill and so was the plan of how to get there. Progress updates were given frequently and - bingo - eventually the goal set two years ago was achieved in November.

"Our first goal is to get people home safe and well," Collin said. "Health and safety and productivity are linked."

Collin "walks the mill" every day talking to the team he occasionally plays golf with.

The mill has not had a lost time injury for nearly 1000 days. Five to six years ago it had a poor health and safety record.

Collin said he did not want to paint Penrose as an industrial utopia but he believed it was a friendly workplace.

The challenges the mill faced were that it was the fifth biggest power user in Auckland, so any power price increases were unwelcome.

Infrastructure was also an issue.

The mill had a rail siding to Toll NZ's Southdown site that was unused because rail had been too unreliable.

Changes to the Holidays Act affected it because the mill worked 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

But the mill was an example of a business in the forestry sector where valued was added and performance was as good as anywhere in the world.