Grant: Collaborative Research and Development Grants

The goal of this project is to maintain and increase the competitiveness of the Canadian pulp and paper industry by making better use of wood and fibre resources. This will be achieved by applying state-of-the-art technology and tools to measure wood and fibre quality in the forest, quantify fibre variability, and identify regions with superior wood quality in order to extract maximum value from the forest resource. Pulp and paper is the largest manufacturing industry in Canada and is particularly important to the economy of Atlantic Canada, where the forest industry represents approximately $2.6 billion in real GDP and over 25,000 primary jobs. The proposed research, to be conducted in collaboration with partners Paprican and Corner Brook Pulp and Paper, will improve the cost-competitiveness of the industry by linking incoming fibre quality to process and product performance, and providing the tools to monitor and control incoming wood quality for improved process stability, reduced operating costs and enhanced product performance. The key objectives of the project are to use state-of-the-art field sensors to measure properties in standing trees or on chip streams feeding Corner Brook Pulp and Paper, establish databases of wood and fibre properties that can be incorporated into a digital forest inventory (GIS) framework, and develop models relating key wood and fibre properties to processing parameters and end-product properties. The technical challenges will be to apply the new optical (NIR-based) sensor technologies by developing accurate calibration curves that are specific to the Corner Brook region of Newfoundland. Although the project is focused on the wood/fibre supply chain of Corner Brook Pulp and Paper, the industry partner for this project, it will be a demonstration case for the Canadian pulp and paper industry on how to maximize fibre/wood value. An estimated 20 to 30 mills in Canada can potentially benefit from the results of the research.