Bio-Insight

JAKARTA, Indonesia, June 30, 2021 (Press Release) -Asia Pulp & Paper (APP) Sinar Mas and MDA are pleased to announce that they have been awarded top honors and named a project of the year by Environment + Energy Leader magazine. Both companies were recognised for their collaboration in reducing deforestation across APP’s entire supplier network to just under 0.06%.

Asia Pulp & Paper partnered with MDA to track any forest cover changes across its supplier network. MDA’s RADARSAT-2 satellite Forest Alert Service (FAS) is able to capture forest disturbances down to a few trees, allowing APP to monitor, in near-real-time, and react to forest cover change resulting from natural causes, illegal logging, or encroachment. Every 24 days, satellite data is acquired by MDA, assessed for changes against historical imagery, and reported to APP, as ‘Alerts’, within three (3) working days. Alerts are then verified by APP’s staff and provided to the relevant supplier(s) to take the needed actions to mitigate forest degradation.

All Alert data is published and publicly available on APP’s web portal, ‘Sustainability Dashboard’. The dashboard provides APP stakeholders with a landscape view of all APP’s pulpwood suppliers’ concessions including conservation forests, pulpwood plantations, and communities. This near-real-time information provides APP’s customers with unparalleled visibility into their supply chain, resulting in sustainable sourcing assurance.

“This year’s winners showed remarkable innovation and commitment to achieving real-world results,” says Jennifer Hermes Nastu, Content Director for Environment + Energy Leader. “Partnerships like APP and MDA help to stop deforestation while assisting organizations meet their UN Sustainable Development Goals.”

“APP takes a holistic approach to sustainability within its entire operation and is committed to long-term forest protection through our Forest Conservation Policy,” said Elim Sritaba, APP’s Chief Sustainability Officer. “We strive to honour our commitments to forest protection through investing in new technologies that provide protection and full transparency for all our clients ensuring a safe and sustainable supply chain.”

“MDA’s commitment to advancing technologies is enabling ever-increasing diligence for environmental sustainability,” said Minda Suchan, MDA’s Vice President of Geointelligence. “Our partnership with APP has combined spaceborne radar imaging with land management responsibilities, which has resulted in APP adopting MDA’s RADARSAT-2 satellite technology to provide a measureable benefit in Indonesian conservation forest management. MDA continues to be motivated to improve its world-leading technologies and capabilities that can be used to benefit the environment.”

The two companies will showcase their award-winning partnership during the annual Environment + Energy Leaders Solutions Summit, taking place July 20 – 21, 2021. The session will be hosted by Elim Sritaba, APP’s Chief Sustainability Officer and Minda Suchan, MDA’s Vice President of Geointelligence.

About the Environment + Energy Leader Awards

For nearly a decade, the Environment + Energy Leader Awards have celebrated excellence in the world of environmental, sustainability and energy management. Award winners are truly buzz-worthy, and companies that sport a Top Project or Top Product of the Year Award badge are known to be the best of the best. When other companies are seeking a sustainability or energy management solution, they know that E+E Product of the Year Award winners offer a significant group of products, vetted by experts, to peruse for help in making their decisions. Project of the Year Award winners are known to illustrate how sustainability and energy management projects can successfully help other companies improve the bottom line.

About Asia Pulp & Paper

Asia Pulp & Paper (APP) is a trade name for a group of pulp and paper manufacturing companies in Indonesia and China. APP is responsible for delivering quality products to meet the growing global demand for tissue, packaging and paper, with an annual combined pulp, paper, packaging product and converting capacity of over 20 million tons per annum. On any given day, APP’s products find their way into the hands of consumers in various branded forms from all over the world.

Ensuring supply chain integrity and commitment to the Sustainable Roadmap Vision 2020 are crucialto APP’s operations.

About MDA

Serving the world from its Canadian home and global offices, MDA is an international space mission partner and a robotics, satellite systems and geointelligence pioneer with a 50-year story of firsts on and above the Earth. With over 2,000 employees across Canada, the US and the UK, MDA is leading the charge towards viable Moon colonies, enhanced Earth observation, communication in a hyper-connected world, and more. With a track record of making space ambitions come true, MDA enables highly skilled people to continually push boundaries, tackle big challenges, and imagine solutions that inspire and endure to change the world for the better, on the ground and in the stars.

MADRID, Spain, June 29, 2021 (Press Release) -Ence’s biofactory in Pontevedra has obtained, for the second consecutive year, the certification of the energy management system in accordance with the international standard ISO 50001 of the Spanish Association for Standardization and Certification (AENOR), which assesses the energy efficiency of this facility.

This seal confirms the Lourizán plant as a company that carries out a systematic approach to performance, procurement and energy consumption during its production process. Thus, this AENOR audit confirms that the company practices an energy policy and adequately manages the energy aspects derived from its activity, which implies real and quantifiable savings in the cost of energy during the production process.

Ence has managed to increase the energy efficiency of this factory and contribute to achieving a more efficient and sustainable process. The first step was to identify those activities with the highest consumption during the manufacture of cellulose pulp. With these data, a plan of measures was launched to minimize the consumption of its facilities and systems in an integrated way, the result of which has been the aforementioned increase in energy efficiency.

Ence’s biofactory in Pontevedra is a clear example of a circular economy. During pulp production, the plant works with materials of natural and renewable origin, generating, at the same time, renewable electrical energy. This energy is obtained in its boilers from the biomass resulting from the manufacture of cellulose, made up of elements such as the branches, leaves and bark of the tree, as well as lignin, a component of wood that constitutes an excellent renewable biofuel and natural.

The plant is self-sufficient, since it is capable of generating all of the energy it consumes. With this renewable energy, Ence Pontevedra contributes to reducing the energy intensity and the carbon footprint, while helping to advance on the path of the energy transition and towards the decarbonisation objectives set by the European Commission. Likewise, the plant manages to give value to the forest remains that, otherwise, would not be used.

The plant also has outstanding international environmental recognitions, such as the Gold Distinction from the European Commission and the Nordic Swan ecolabel, the official ecological seal of the Scandinavian governments. Its pulp has also been recognized with the EU Ecolabel for graphic paper, for tissue paper and tissue paper products.

CASTLEGAR, BC , June 25, 2021 (Press Release) -Climate change is the greatest challenge of our time. At Mercer, we’re committed to being part of the solution. We believe technology and innovation can help get us there. For us, accountability means that we are accountable individually and have a responsibility to our partnerships. We contribute and take ownership beyond our job descriptions. This definition is broad and multifaceted, but like our other values, accountability is in everything we do.

We’re a producer of green energy, a partner in healthy forest practices, and innovators working to advance cleaner technology. We take these roles seriously. Every day, we strive to build a more sustainable, resilient future for us all.

In 2021, Mercer Celgar is embarking on a capital investment project to upgrade our existing woodroom. This project has a total cost of $31.4 million, of which $4.5 million is funded through Natural Resources Canada’s Investments in Forest Industry Transformation (IFIT) program. Completion of the woodroom upgrade project will improve the competitiveness of the pulp mill operation, reduce emissions, improve fibre utilization, and create local jobs during the construction phase. With expected project completion within the first half of 2022, this investment will, most importantly, provide further certainty for the employees who work at the mill, for our suppliers and partners, and for the whole West Kootenay region.

Project Details

The biorefinery concept implemented at Mercer Celgar enables our mill to manufacture pulp, renewable energy, and biochemicals by utilizing two streams of fibre supply: residual sawmill chips, which are a byproduct of lumber production; and low-quality logs (known as pulp logs) that can’t be made into lumber and would otherwise be left in the forest by logging operations to be slash burned.

For perspective, we estimate that 4 million tonnes of wood is being wasted and unnecessarily burned in British Columbia each year – contributing to a large percentage of BC’s greenhouse gas emissions. That is enough material to feed almost half of BC’s annual pulp production or the equivalent of approximately 3 pulp mills the size of Celgar. The utilization of this fibre would equate to the equivalent of almost 1.4 million tonnes of pulp and up to 2.24 million megawatts of power, a byproduct of the pulping process. That is enough eco-certified green energy to supply over 200,000 homes in British Columbia for 1 year.

For a pulp log to be made into pulp, it must first go through a process called debarking, where the bark is removed from the log. Once the bark has been removed, it can then be chipped into usable wood chips that can be fed into the pulping operation. The debarking and chipping processes are performed in our woodroom.

Currently, our woodroom utilizes a ring debarker to remove the bark from pulp logs, one log at a time. Due to the size of pulp logs, this is a slow and inefficient process. With that in mind, our Mercer team partnered with Peterson, a leading debarker manufacturer, to develop a first-of-its-kind stationary flail debarker. This debarker functions by way of chains abrading the logs, thereby removing the bark. This updated process enables us to process multiple stems simultaneously and to debark even the smallest pulp logs in a more effective and efficient way. This new debarking process utilizes more of the waste fibre that would otherwise be left in slash piles and convert this material into a usable, sustainable product. This fits with our commitment to enhancing forest utilization through resource efficiency.

Alongside the installation of the new debarker, we will also be upgrading our refuse conveyors, installing equipment that recovers white wood that is lost during the debarking process and maximizes the usable fibre realized. We let nothing go to waste and we mean it – the bark that is removed from the debarking process is used to fuel our power boiler to create steam, which is then converted into our eco-certified green energy.

Upgrading the Mercer Celgar woodroom with the stationary flail debarker will also enable us to process the pulp logs on our mill site powered by our eco-certified green energy, eliminating the use of diesel-powered mobile chippers that are currently outsourced and in use at remote yards.

Innovating for Better Sustainability

The future of forestry is dynamic and innovative. At Mercer Celgar, we work hard to be at the forefront of innovation in our sector. We believe that a brighter, cleaner future is within reach for our region and the people who live here. Our vision includes the possibility of cleaner air, reduced CO2 emissions, the potential for fewer and less intense forest fires, more jobs, and innovative new bio-based businesses. Our team will keep working collaboratively with industry, community, and government leaders to make that future a reality. Our woodroom upgrade project is just one of many steps we are taking to bring us closer to realizing this future. 

At Mercer, we are transforming how we do business by investing in the future now. We look forward to sharing our successes with our team members, stakeholders, and communities. Together, we will remain accountable – protecting jobs, contributing to the local economies, rising to meet and exceed the challenge of climate change, and continuing to manage our resources efficiently. At Mercer, we are Sustainable. By Design.