Solenis to Increase Prices on all Process Chemicals Globally

‘We will offer packaging that does not yet exist’, said Koehler CEO Kai Furler in an interview with the newspaper F.A.Z. at the beginning of 2018. Some readers will have wondered where he got the self-confidence for this bold statement from. On the one hand, it shows great confidence in the company’s research and development. But it also anticipated what was announced a year later, in January 2019: the founding of the Green Coating Collaboration, a joint laboratory between Koehler and Darmstadt Technical University. The name already hints at the institution’s field of activity. The focus is on barrier coatings that can give flexible packaging paper properties that previously only plastic could offer. These include mineral oil barriers, water vapour barriers or barriers for oils and fats, as well as aroma barriers. ‘We are conducting fundamental research in the Green Coating Collaboration’, explains Dr. Markus Wildberger, Head of Technology at Koehler. ‘Our goal is to find and test more sustainable, bio-based raw materials for barrier coating in order to ultimately use them on production line 8. It is important not to use raw materials that could potentially be used as food. After all, our packaging material should not compete with food for land.’

Mercer International Inc. reports that its Celgar mill, in addition to regularly planned maintenance downtime of five days, will be taking approximately 30 days of additional downtime (aggregate 52,000 ADMTs) in July 2020. The additional downtime largely results from reduced fiber availability in the mill’s procurement area as a result of Covid related sawmill curtailments in British Columbia, the imposition of sawlog equivalent stumpage charges on pulpwood and complex stumpage rules which result in a significant amount of pulp wood already harvested being left to burn in the forest.

The operations of Metsä Group's only production unit in Russia, the Svir sawmill, have been suspended. Wood procurement in Russia for the Svir sawmill and imports to Metsä Group’s Finnish and Swedish mills has also been discontinued.