Aftercare service keeps newsprint rolling

The production of newsprint is both a high technology, and a high-speed, operation and if problems occur, solutions must be delivered quickly.

The production of newsprint is both a high technology, and a high-speed, operation and if problems occur, solutions must be delivered quickly.

Shotton Paper, part of the Finnish owned UPM-Kymmene Corporation, is the largest manufacturer of newsprint in Britain and a user of Siemens aftercare service.

A service that is available to Shotton 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, with a site presence guaranteed within four hours.

Located on Deeside near Chester, the Shotton mill is built on the site of an old steel works and newsprint production began in 1985.

The opening coincided with the introduction of new high speed printing technology and within five years a second mill had been built and production had doubled.

Today the works is continuously operated at peak output, to deliver over 470,000 tonnes of newsprint each year, or just over one fifth of the total UK consumption.

The manner in which paper is produced at Shotton is of particular significance as it is the only British paper mill that depends solely on UK resources.

Paper is made from almost equal parts of recycled fibre, derived from old magazines and newspapers, and from fresh wood pulp using Sitka spruce from the company's 170,000 hectares of forest in the UK.

The papermaking process at Shotton comprises the four stages common to such installations.

The initial pulping operation includes de-inking, an essential feature of plants that use pulp produced from recycled paper, and the removal of debris such as staples.

The main paper making operations, which are almost 120 metres long, is followed by the winding of the product, into the roll sizes needed by the customer, before the final wrapping of the product.

The lightweight papers produced at Shotton weigh only 45 to 49 grams per square metre and any impurities in the fresh wood/recycled paper pulp are serious as they affect both sides of the paper.

The process control of this extremely high-speed process is one of the most demanding production operations and the need for first class quality control makes the task even more difficult.

The quality of equipment used by paper makers is therefore the best that is available.

The Shotton plant uses a wide range of drive sizes, for example the most recent paper mill, commissioned in 1989, employs a total of 27 Siemens AC and DC drives rated between 37 and 910kW.

Reliability is essential, as unplanned downtime, albeit from component part failure or from poor control, has a serious impact on both capacity and profitability.

Shotton Paper uses Siemens inverters and has standardised on Simatic S5/S7 programmable controllers are used for plant control throughout the mill.

As David Ditchfield, the Electrical Engineer responsible for the Shotton plant, commented recently: "Continuous production operations need a maintenance facility that is always available.

The service agreement that we have had with Siemens for several years gives our technical staff continuous access to Siemens experience and advice.

Our specialists have a one-to-one working relationship with engineers that know our installation in detail and, should it be necessary, Siemens can be on site within 4 hours.

As a result unplanned downtime has been minimised".

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