Canfor Pulp Products’ President and Chief Executive Officer, Joe Nemeth has declared three important investments, totaling over $10 million, in innovation during the opening ceremony of new Canfor Pulp Innovation Centre in Burnaby, British Columbia.
Canfor Pulp Products owns about 49.8% stake in Canfor Pulp Limited Partnership (CPLP), a major producer of market-grade kraft pulp. The Canfor Pulp Innovation Centre has a 6,400-square-foot laboratory and 9 technical staff to address the opportunities and challenges vital to CPLP. The centre’s annual operating budget will be $2 million. It features sophisticated, extensive technical devices for testing paper and pulp and a pilot refiner for modeling pulps’ paper mill treatment.
Canfor Pulp Products will also invest in a new research grant program, a partnership between CPLP and the University of Northern British Columbia and the University of British Columbia. The company will offer $225,000 in the coming three years to the universities to conduct new research projects as per the direction of CPLP.
The third investment will include collaborations with government and equipment suppliers to deploy $8 million worth sophisticated sensing technologies in CPLP’s three Prince George mills. The sensing technologies include the Eurocon PulpEye, the Metso Quality Vision System and FPInnovations’ two sensors, which include a unique wood chip sensor and a patented sensor to measure fibre wall thickness.
The BC Ministry of Forests, Mines, Lands and Natural Resources Canada lent their support to this extensive sensing technology initiative and provided $2.1 million and $2.4 million, respectively. With these technologies, CPLP can monitor the fibre quality on-line, provide data to control operations and optimize pulp value recovery from wood chips produced from sawmills.
Source: http://www.canforpulp.com