Repair work at Fortress Paper's Thurso mill is completed. After an explosion in the gas collection system and a following two-week downtime, production could be restarted on 6 October.
The dissolving pulp mill Thurso in Québec, Canada of Canadian pulp and paper manufacturer Fortress Paper has resumed operations on 6 October after an incident in late September. On 21 September, the company had informed that production had to be halted due to an explosion that took place in the gas collection system related to a recovery boiler. Dissolving pulp production as well as the cogeneration facility were now operating in ordinary course, said Fortress Paper.
The Thurso mill is Fortress Paper's only pulp mill and can produce dissolving pulp as well as northern bleached hardwood kraft pulp (NBHK) for conversion into premium packaging, sanitary and technical papers as well as specialty paper. The PM at the mill is a swing machine which can produce either 200,000 tpy of dissolving pulp or 250,000 tpy of NBHK.
The company's dissolving pulp capacity is poised to increase by 25,500 tpy in the next two years thanks to investments which will enable the use of birch wood as raw material, the company said. The mill employs 336 employees.
