FieldCare at Mondi, Richards Bay
Henk Coetzee from Mondi in Helsinki,
March 2005
In March 2003,
Anglo American plc gave the go-ahead for its wholly owned forest products subsidiary, Mondi South Africa, to proceed with a US$220 million expansion and modernization plan at its Richards Bay mill, KwaZulu-Natal, in order to increase its bleached eucalyptus pulp production by some 32%. The project involved building new cooking and bleaching plants, a rebuild of the pulp-drying machine and modifications to the chemical recovery plants.
The mill's total capacity, which includes both eucalyptus pulp and whitetop kraftliner, is being increased from 575,000 tpa to 720,000 tpa. The additional pulp is destined mainly for European markets, including Mondi Business paper’s Hausmening paper mill in Austria.
FieldCare in commissioning, operation and maintenance
According to Henk Coetzee, E & I Consultant, Mondi Group Technical Services, the mill has been running at 75% of its new planned capacity since 1 February 2005.
Metso’s FieldCare
TM remote device configuration and diagnostic tools have been installed in four areas of the Richards Bay mill – on the Fiberline, in the evaporation plant and the lime kiln, as well as in the maintenance workshop for diagnostics. All the valves in these areas are linked to FieldCare.
FieldCare has been used for the last 18 months in configuration and in commissioning and for the last 12 months in maintenance. The engineering and maintenance teams have been the main users of FieldCare and, according to Coetzee, because they have found it easy to use, it was readily accepted. It is now an integral part of the support engineering and installation work as well as being essential for maintenance.
During commissioning of the new plant, FieldCare played an important role in on-line configuration and in verifying devices. Now the plant is up and running, Coetzee believes that FieldCare provides a competitive edge to both diagnostics and condition monitoring. Mondi also use FieldCare for instrumentation. Last but not least, FieldCare also makes it possible to take advantage of base data when assessing process life-cycle data.
Fast payback
Payback on FieldCare has been so short, according to Coetzee, that the software has already paid for itself. At this stage, Mondi feel that they have already been able to benefit from the full potential of FieldCare during commissioning, but they believe that there are more benefits to unlock as far as its use in predictive maintenance is concerned.
(On photo above Colin van Vuuren and Henk Coetzee from Mondi in Helsinki, March 2005.)
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Mondi South Africa’s Richards Bay Mill
Mondi South Africa’s Richards Bay mill is situated in Northern KwaZulu-Natal, near the Bay’s modern deep water port, one of the biggest bulk cargo harbours in the Southern Hemisphere.
Commissioned in 1984, this mill is one of the largest single-line operations of its kind in the world. Following the commissioning of a US$26-million oxygen delignification plant in 2000, Richards Bay is capable of producing 100% elemental chlorine-free (ECF) pulp.
The mill’s two key products are: Baycel, a premier grade bleached hardwood pulp, made from 100% eucalyptus fibre, and Baywhite, a whitetop kraft linerboard for high-quality point-of-sale and display carton applications. Both Baycel and Baywhite are FSC Chain of Custody certified, i.e. they are produced using wood from certified sustainable forests.
