£4m Machine To Make Paper

Press, Volume CI, Issue 29828, 22 May 1962, Page 14

£4m Machine To Make Paper

I tie Press' Special Service

KAWERAU, May 21. The new £4 million paper machine for the Tasman Pulp and Paper Company at Kawerau is rapidly taking shape. Known as the No. 2 paper machine, it is the mam feature of a £l2 million expansion programme. Designed in the United States and built by Walmsleys. England, the newsprint machine will be one of the fastest in the • orld An o '-cial of the companysaid the machine would have to be run-in slowly but once it began to work at capacity newsprint production would rise from 92.000 tons to about 200,000 tons a year It would run at a rate of 3000 feet a minute The building to house the new machine is virtually completed. One wall has been left open to allow easy access The building has a floor area of about 50.000 square feet and is adjacent to the No. 1 paper machine room. Inside the new machine room, workmen, electricians

and engineers swarm over < the 350 feet of huge rollers i and complicated machinery Workmen are installing 1 fans and ducts for heat and i air control. The expansive programme : was originally scheduled to t cost £ll million. However, i the company discovered that ' more power than previously t thought necessary will b= ( needea tor the new additions to the plant. < A third power boiler plan - f is costing an additional £1 i million i About two-thirds of the total production of news- j print next year is expected : to be exported to Australia, i The remainder will probably i be used locally. s Under the expansion pro- i ject three new grinders are c being added to the groundwood mill, giving a capacity s for groundwood pulp pro- 1 duction of over 500 tons a day i A three-stage bleaching t plant for semi-bleached kraft ; pulp will lift capacity to 300 tons a day j To cope with the increased ; intake of pulp logs a 87- t foot dry drum barker with a i

diameter of 124 feet is being installed The existing hydraulic barker is working to capacity The chlorine plant will be nearly doubled in size and the capacity of the freshwater plant will also be doubled The plant will then use 24 million gallons of water a day Floor space is being increased by 250,000 square feet New buildings for the project will cost £1 million alone. Power consumption at the plant will be increased from about 27.000 kilowatts to about 50.000 kilowatts. This will mean an annual consumption of 450 million kilowatt hours—greater than that of Wellington. The use of geothermal steam power will also be further developed. Housing in Kawerau is being increased to accommodate the rising number of employees. By the time the expansion programme is completed the permanent staff at the mill and logging company sites will be nearly 2000.