Through a long-term partnership with Viken Skog, BillerudKorsnäs is aiming to secure both tailormade BCTMP and wood supply, supporting its strategy for sustainable and profitable growth in paperboard.
Viken Skog, a Norwegian forest owner group, and packaging materials supplier BillerudKorsnäs have put in place a plan to establish production of bleached chemi-thermomechanical pulp (BCTMP) in Norway. This will be delivered by the Viken Skog Follum mill in Hønefoss, Norway, which already has much of the infrastructure needed to establish such a production line. It is also located in an area with competitive and sustainable wood supply and good transport links to BillerudKorsnäs’ board mills. Going forward, the mill will be developed into a sustainable operation with high energy efficiency and a low carbon footprint. The concept will include production of biogas, use of excess heat for district heating, and possibly also carbon capture.
Moreover, this project is well aligned with the Norwegian government’s ambition to raise new green industry in the country, based on forest and wood resources. In addition, the project is one of the rare large industry projects in the centre of Norway, rather than at the coast. Such is the interest in this project that Norway’s Prime minister Jonas Gahr Støre and the country’s Minister of Trade and Industry, Jan Christian Vestre, recently visited the Follum mill.
Johann Christoph Michalski, president and CEO at BillerudKorsnäs, said, ‘Our strategy has a clear goal – to deliver sustainable growth in packaging materials. To get the opportunity to develop the new mill in Follum as a state-of-the-art sustainable operation is in line with our strategy. We aim for negative carbon dioxide footprint in production with biogas and carbon capture.’
The ongoing feasibility study is expected to be completed during the first half of 2023.
