Customer case:

SCA Östrand - World's largest softwood pulp line

May 6, 2020

SCA's expanded Östrand pulp mill located Timrå, Sweden, had its start-up in 2018. With this project, SCA Östrand doubled its production capacity from 430,000 tonnes to 900,000 tonnes per year and it became the largest production line for bleached softwood kraft pulp in the world. The massive project, also known as Helios, is one of the largest industrial investments in Sweden to date.

Östrand.jpg
The startup was very successful, and we really worked well as a team, both internally in SCA and together with Valmet.”
Daniel Solberg, SCA’s process manager for the fiberline

Summary:

Location Timrå, Northern Sweden
Customer challenge Double the production capacity, without disturbing the production of the existing mill and without any serious accidents. The extensive project had 9 sub-projects, and a total of 7,900 people taking care of everything from construction work, assembly, and erection, through to startup and commissioning of the finished pulp mill.
Solution

Valmet's supply scope included:

Cooking plant 

  • The world's largest softwood digester
  • CompactCooking™ – Valmet’s continuous cooking system that gives higher pulp yield, lower rejects and reduced environmental impact.

Results

With Helios completed, Östrand’s production capacity has doubled to 900,000 tonnes of bleached softwood pulp per year, with the future possibility to expand to one million tonnes. “The successful result means we’ve been able to build the world’s largest softwood pulp line, on budget and on time", says Ingela Ekebro, the President for Project Helios for SCA.

Keywords Chemical pulping, Expansion, Sweden, Europe