According to Strathcona’s chief operating officer Bryan Best, Strathcona can rightfully boast a long history of being a being a good corporate citizen as far as the environment is concerned—having successfully pioneered the use of recycled secondary wood fiber in the papermaking process way back in 1922.
By 1962, most of the company’s products featured recycled-fiber content, Best relates, working their way up to 100-percent recycled fiber content by 1979.
A long-time mill employee who originally started out as an electrician, Best has witnessed most of the company’s environmental progress first-hand.
“We are always looking at ways to reduce the environmental impact of our operations on and near our mill site,” Best told Canadian Packaging on a recent visit to the mill, pointing to a recent $25-million capital investment as “a sure-fire way to show our commitment to the future.”
Part of that investment includes a new state-of-the-art stock cleaning system—as well as banks of low-density cleaning towers applying centrifugal force to remove potential furnish contaminants—that has enabled the mill to supply its clients with a cleaner board to facilitate more efficient downstream converting and printing processes.
“Along with having made some clay-coater improvements to add smoothness to the sheets, we were also able to improve on the press performance and impressions per hour,” explains Best. “In other words, we became more efficient with less waste.”
The Napanee plant boasts a highly automated, computerized process that can create paperboard substrates in a very efficient manner, Best relates, with the entire process monitored and supervised in a centralized control room.
Using cutting-edge computer programs to ensure reliable roll consistency via ongoing checks and balances prior to, during and following the actual manufacturing process, the mill has become so highly automated that customers can check out in real-time to see how their order is coming along during the production, according to Best.
“In fact,” he states, “we’ve computerized so much that we actually have a few customers who do their product ordering with us via the computer.”
As befits a very happy end-user of all the impressive technological wealth assembled at the Napanee mill, Best doesn’t pull punches when asked to compare his plant to the competition.
“While there are always a few people out there for whom a cheaply made substrate is all they need,” he reasons, “that is not who we would call our customer.
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