L ong before the Revolution- ary War, a small mill in the

. . . . . . . . Hyde Park area south of Boston was producing paper from the nearby

forests of Eastern Massachusetts. At that time, howev-

er, the revolutionaries of papermaking couldn’t predict

that Boston would become the metropolis that it is

today, and that the forest would disappear. Now, the mill

stands in the middle of Boston’s urban sprawl and it

doesn’t have a local forest to supply virgin pulp. It has

also gone through its share of owners, shut-downs, and

openings. But rather than surrender, the mill-now

called Patriot Paper -is flourishing by using Boston’s

urban forest of office waste to make a progressive line

of 100% recycled paper.

Patriot’s plan for success is to increase the amount

of post-consumer content allowed in its recycled paper-

without compromising quality. While most recycled

printing and writing paper manufacturers are hovering

around 10-20% post-consumer content, Patriot has already

developed an 80% post-consumer sheet, asking customers

.................... BY KATHLEEN MEADE

SEPTEMBER 1992 WASTE AGE 31

1728, and the mill itself, except for a few shut-downs, has been in operation since 1773. One of the more recent owners, James River Corp., pur- chased the mill from Diamond International in the early 1980s. James River was making uncoated specialty papers there and employed the old washing system of deinking to make some recycled sheet. In 1988, when the parent company consolidated, James River shut the plant down and started looking for a buyer.

A group of investors, eager to enter the market for recy- cled printing and writing paper, offered to lease the plant from James River under the name Hyde Park Paper. That group operated the deinking facility successfully for about three months in 1989, then ran into financial problems. Hyde Park shut down the mill and returned the lease to James River.

Patriot’s revival About three years ago, a couple of entrepreneurs-Mark

Baisch and Stephen Read-decided to revive the closed mill. The two had served as financial consultants on the earlier James River deal, and they recognized that the facility’s greatest strength was its ability to produce recycled paperAspecia1- ly at a time when recycling mandates were increasing. Boston itself has a law requiring office paper recycling, and most New England states were looking to buy more recycled paper. Not only that, but waste paper was selling at significantly lower prices than virgin wood pulp in the region.

The two businessmen needed financing, so they joined with Tembec, Inc. (Montreal, Quebec), which agreed to be a partner in the mill. Financing was tricky, since the mill had been shut down and couldn’t prove its viability, but the venture man- aged to secure tax-exempt bonds issued by Lehman Brothers (New York City) for more than $30 million; the National

machine, running at about half its capacity, to make 100% recycled paper with the old deinking equipment, and in early 1991, the second paper machine was brought on line. In December 1991, Patriot completed construction and phase-in of its new hydrapulper and deinking system, which uses some of the equipment from the old, washing-only facility. The mill is not quite up to its full capacity of 200 tons of recycled paper per day, but it is very near that, says Jim Kovala, Patriot’s president. “We’re using 100% recycled fiber, and 99% of that has ink on it,” Kovala notes.

Packing in the wastepaper Patriot is currently buying some 75,000 to 80,000 tons

per year of waste paper from East Coast brokers and waste haulers. “We get fiber from all over the Northeast,” Kovala says. Major suppliers include Browning-Ferris Industries, North Shore, and Atlantic Coast Fibre, and the company works with a number of smaller suppliers, too. Prices for the waste paper are not fixed; rather, the mill adjusts them accord- ing to markets. Patriot has discussed the possibility of long- term contracts with large haulers and brokers on a national scale, especially as it increases its amount of post-consumer fiber needed from office recycling programs.

Waste paper sources at the mill are categorized as either “post-consumer” or “post-commercial.’’ Included in the post- commercial category are printer’s waste, unprinted comput- er print-out (CPO), envelope clippings, coated book paper, and some higher grades of white ledger and colored ledger. In order to achieve high levels of post-consumer content, Patriot decid- ed to concentrate on office waste paper supplies. This approach allows the mill to operate on a relatively low-cost fiber sup-

32 WASTE AGE SEPTEMBER 1992

Patriot Contd. . . . . . . . . . ply, which it couldn‘t do if it were recycling mostly high grades of waste paper.

Some IO- 14 trucks per day, each carrying 20-25 tons of waste paper, bring material to the facility five days per week. The facility can also accept waste paper by rail; the railcar can back right into the mill, where the material is pulled off with a forklift. More than 250 tons of waste paper come through the mill’s dock each day, and it all stops at the warehouse, where bales are broken and inspected before the waste paper hits the deinking system.

Deinlzing: Under control According to Patriot, the key to any deinking system

starts with control of fiber supply. This involves a thorough inspection program and a close working relationship with its suppliers. The inspection process can lead to rejection of loads that contain undesirable contaminants, such as plastic, masking tape. and “stickies”-adhesives that can cause prob- lems in the process.

Bales that are accepted travel by conveyor right into Patriot’s deinking system. The facility includes a proprietary combination of high-consistency pulping, dispersion, and flotation, as well as cleaning and screening. “The trick is to separate the ink from the fiber,” Kovala says. It is the cumu- lative effect of Patriot’s pulping, screening, flotation, and washing systems that is allowing the company to use office waste paper as its major raw material while still ensuring

Pushing the post-consumer limit Patriot is marketing “Post-80,” a print- ing and writing grade that has 80% post-consumer fiber, while the compa- ny makes modifications to the deink- ing system. Admittedly, the paper is a little dirty, but it is absorbing a lot of material from recycling programs and it is competitively priced. “It’s an interim grade we’ve developed while we fine-tune our system to accept 65% post-consumer with little or no recog- nizable dirt,” says Edward Atwill, Patriot’s vice president of sales and marketing.

Since Patriot is the first mill in the country to use this combination of deinking technology, he notes, it will take the company a little while to move its post-consumer content to the 65% level in its standard grades. Right now, Patriot is producing a sheet with 15% post-consumer content. The com-

34 WASTE AGE SEPTEMBER 1992

product quality. After a quality control inspector has approved a bale, the

waste paper is moved via conveyor up to a large hydrapulper, says Catherine Nicolino, a Patriot sales representative. Deink- ing actually begins in the hydrapulper, where the friction of this pulping system helps remove some of the ink. Various screening stages allow Patriot to remove both large contam- inants such as staples and wood shives, as well as smaller, more flexible plastic contaminants such as the plastic window material from envelopes and various adhesives.

The pressure deinking module (PDM) is a key phase of the system. The PDM allows ink to be removed from the fiber through a flotation process. A chemical reaction causes a frothing on the surface of the mixture; the ink rises into the froth,.where it can be skimmed off and removed as a sludge. A major concern for environmentalists has been the conse- quences of deinking sludge, but recent developments may allow Patriot to use its sludge as landfill cover and compost.

Traditional washing methods supplement the recently added flotation equipment and ensure proper fiber consistency through a re-thickening process. The deinked pulp can then be used in Patriot’s papermaking machines to produce 100% recycled bond, offset paper. envelopes, and other fine paper products. Patriot even ships the final products in recycled cormgated cardboard packaging, recycled ream wrap, and recy- cled labels.

Patriot’s intricate deinking operations are monitored by

pany expects to increase the post-con- sumer content of all grades to achieve 65% levels by the end of 1992 or early in the first quarter of 1993. “Our philos- ophy is, we need to make a sheet that performs no different than virgin paper,” Atwill notes.

Other recycled paper mills in the U.S. have made a sheet that is as white as virgin, but few of them have been able to add more than 10% post-con- sumer content without encountering quality problems. Patriot is employing new technology to buck this trend.

“We’re going to end up with the proper deinking equipment such that we can run 60,70, up to 100% post-con- sumer,” Kovala says. “Our intent is to make white bond and white offset-as good as the virgin paper-with 100% recycled content and up to 100% post- consumer. In our minds, that’s feasible.”

three touch-screen computers”one at the hydrapulper and two more in a con- trol booth overlooking the PDMs. This automated system allows mill operators to control and change such things as water and valve levels, all from one place. Water level control is especially important to maintain a stable system and ensure optimum ink removal.

Business decisions that benefit the environment

To better treat the water that is used for all this washing, Patriot is building a new effluent treatment facility. The facil- ity already uses a clarifier-a large tub that serves as a central point to remove all remaining sludge from the water- and recirculates the clean water back into the system. According to Nicolino, Patriot has been using two to three mil- lion gallons of water per day from the nearby Neponsett River. With the new

“

Patriot Contd. . . . . . . . . . effluent treatment system, she says, the mill will substantial- ly curtail its daily water usage.

The new effluent treatment system will also allow Patri- ot to treat all of its own waste water, thus eliminating the need to use the city’s sewage treatment plant. Designed by Camp Dresser & McKee, the plant will remove solids and other material from the water, then pump it back into the Neponsett River. In addition to saving the company money on sewer costs, Nicolino says, this new facility will actually treat the water in such a way that it will be cleaner than it was when Patriot got it from the river.

In addition to careful cleaning of the water, Patriot uses hydrogen peroxide rather than chlorine, for technical reasons, even though hydrogen peroxide is more expensive, says Edward Atwill, the company’s vice president of sales and

. marketing. The icing on the cake, though, is that the mill has fewer complaints from environmentalists, because it isn’t using chlorine, he adds.

According to Atwill, Patriot has a habit of making busi- ness decisions that also benefit the environment. The decision to use hydrogen peroxide and the plan for the effluent treatment system were both for financial and technical reasons, but they have environmental benefits as well, he notes. The decision to use more post-consumer waste in its recycled paper, while sav- ing company money in furnish costs, is also a feather in its cap with recyclers.

In addition, Atwill says, the company can only compete directly with bigger mills that can produce large amounts of vir- gin paper if Patriot uses low-cost office waste paper as its raw material. Recycled paper, especially paper with high post- consumer content, also has a competitive edge with buyers that are concerned about the environment. The challenge, howev- er, is for the company to improve its deinking system to the point where it can handle even more waste paper from offices and still produce a clean sheet. “We want to use the worst possi- ble stuff to make the best quality paper,” Atwill explains. I

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