Zellstoff Stendal GmbH

The Zellstoff Stendal pulp mill is situated in Sachsen-Anhalt, west of Berlin in what was once East Germany. The mill, whose main shareholder is Mercer International, produces kraft pulp for papermaking reinforcement using bleached softwood spruce and pine.

When the Stendal mill came on stream in 2004, it created jobs for around 600 locals and represented an important milestone in the rebuilding of former East Germany's industrial infrastructure. However, it also had high demands to fulfill in terms of capacity and quality.


An ambitious contender

Given tough competition from Asia, new pulp mills like Stendal are unusual in Europe – especially in the case of long fiber. So despite easy access to roads, railways and the River Elbe, the Stendal mill needed to balance high quality and low cost in order to succeed in the Central European market.

The mill's annual target was set at 550,000 metric tons of reliable, uniform and high-quality pulp, to be produced using regional wood resources.

To ensure this capacity, Metso was chosen as the single supplier when the mill was contracted in 2001. By delivering the complete process from wood handling to baling, Metso was able to optimize the balance, tuning and automation of the different equipment.


Built for consistency

The technology chosen for Stendal was specially designed to produce a high-quality end product with minimum environmental impact. The woodhandling phase, for example, was built using Metso ChipWay, a technology that minimizes wood losses and creates chips with a high degree of uniformity.

Most important, however, were the eight Metso digesters, designed for SuperBatch-K cooking. The SuperBatch-K process delivers pulp of the highest quality while maximizing strength properties, which are of vital importance in meeting the needs and requirements of paper producers. The process is also highly flexible with varied materials, such as Stendal's mix of 70 percent pine and 30 percent spruce.


Looking to the future

After one year of operation, results suggest that the Stendal mill will live up to its tough expectations. Stendal's SuperBatch cooking process is getting highly consistent pulp from the local softwood. There is every confidence that the Metso equipment and process automation will yield affordable, reliable and high-quality pulp production.

Two additional Metso digesters, delivered in December 2005, will allow Stendal to run more flexibly, thus enabling further cost and quality optimization. Their addition will help Stendal take full advantage of the Metso Fiberline system.