New Zealand Forests Gain International Visibility

The application period to join the technical working group for the revision of requirements for Forest Stewardship Standards is closing soon on 24 May 2022. The revision of four normative documents regulating the requirements for development and maintenance of Forest Stewardship Standards (FSS) is starting in July 2022 and is scheduled to be completed by the end of 2024. For more information and to submit your application visit here (https://fsc.org/en/newsfeed/join-the-technical-working-group-to-revise-the-requirements-for-forest-stewardship). Applications are open until 24 May 2022. We are looking forward to receiving yours.

If you want to see just how complicated a supply chain can be, the operations of Asia Pulp and Paper (APP) on Hainan Island, China, gives an idea of what goes into products that we often take for granted. And considering that APP is also an integral supplier to companies around the world, it is easy to see how one wayward employee or lax oversight can land a company in hot water with its stakeholders, particularly environmentalists. In APP’s case, its business on Hainan — from tree seedlings to the finished product — offers a case study on what it takes to evolve into a more responsible and sustainable company. Trees, obviously, are to APP what wheat, soy or palm oil are to other companies. APP’s managed forests in Indonesia combine to cultivate far more raw material for the company than its current holdings in China. But those forests, concentrated in Hainan, offer a sense of the scale APP has developed as the world continues to demand paper. APP’s most recent tour for journalists started from Haikou, the province’s capital and home to 2 million people. Skyscrapers and condominium high-rises eventually give way to a lush landscape of palm trees and plantations that grow just about everything from bananas to mangoes to rubber. After a 90-minute drive, we arrived at a site where eucalyptus trees soar when compared to the stalks of a papaya farm just a few hundred yards away.

The heating plant is located on Vattenfall’s existing combined heat and power plant site in Uppsala, Sweden, some 70 km north of Stockholm. This new plant supplies more than 110 MW of district heat to the Uppsala area and is also prepared for electricity production at a later stage. The fuel for the new plant comprises different kinds of wood-based biomass, such as recycled wood, bark, wood chips, and sawdust. The ANDRITZ scope of supply included biomass receiving, handling and storage silos, a biomass-fired boiler with flue gas cleaning, and a flue gas condenser. The boiler is based on the ANDRITZ EcoFluid bubbling fluidized bed design, which combines high efficiency with excellent environmental performance. Flue gas emissions are reduced to very low levels, with the selective catalytic reduction (SCR) method for NOx emissions and a baghouse filter, including sorbent feeding, for sulfur dioxide (SO2), hydrochloric acid (HCl), heavy metals, and dust emissions. The flue gas condenser significantly increases the district heat output and, therefore, improves plant efficiency to beyond 110% when calculated using the fuel lower heating value.