From wood to pulp, to pulp, paper, and paper products

The paper industry is a typical long-chain, asset-heavy, long-cycle industry with diverse needs: the typical papermaking industry chain is "forest-pulp-papermaking - all kinds of downstream paper". Among them, the cultivation of rapid growth forest for pulping requires reserve forest land and cultivation, and the maturity cycle of trees is longer, requiring at least 5 years to be harvested for production. The production of pulp and machine-made paper needs to purchase large paper making equipment and supporting production capacity, the cycle is about 2-3 years; The growth rate of all types of downstream demand has slowed down after experiencing China's high-speed growth stage, and cyclicality is gradually replacing growth.

According to the national economic industry classification standard, the paper industry mainly refers to the paper and paper products manufacturing industry, including pulp manufacturing industry, paper industry, paper products manufacturing industry three links; Therefore, the paper industry is highly related to some basic industries, such as forestry, agriculture, printing, packaging, machinery manufacturing, chemical industry, environmental protection and so on. In general, the paper industry has the characteristics of intensive technology capital, significant economies of scale, high resource dependence and consumption, and relatively dispersed industry concentration.

I. Wood

According to plant classification, wood can be divided into two categories, gymnosperms commonly referred to as cork or coniferous trees. Angiosperms are called hardwoods or broad-leaved trees, or deciduous trees or evergreen trees.

Coniferous wood has tight tissue structure, high lignin content, and most of it is distributed in the cell wall, and it is difficult to cook. The structure of broadleaf wood is more compact than that of coniferous wood, and it is difficult to penetrate, but compared with coniferous wood, the content of lignin is lower, and the cell wall is less, so it is easier to cook than coniferous wood.

The same is coniferous wood or broadleaf wood, due to different species, its organizational structure, physical properties and chemical composition are different, cooking conditions and pulp properties are also different. Even if it is the same tree, due to sapwood, heartwood ratio, late wood rate and different species of origin, it is inevitable to differ. Hardwoods typically contain more cellulose and less lignin than softwood, with higher extract content.

Common softwood pulp types are: Scandinavian pine, Radiata pine, Southern pine, red ceder, lodgepole pine, cedar (ceder), hemlock (hemlock) white pine is white spruce (white spruce), black spruce (black spruce), douglas pine (also known as douglas fir), larch (larch), balsam fir (balsam fir), Alpine fir (Alpine fir) and so on.

Radiata Pine and Southern pine are commonly used for pulping in American pulp, Chilean pulp and New Zealand pulp, Scandinavian pine is commonly used for pulping in Northern European countries, and several other species are common in Canada. In North American tree species, the extract content of absolute dry wood is mostly less than 1%, and the extract content of southern pine is slightly higher.

Commonly used broad-leaved wood pulp species are: eucalyptus, acacia wood, poplar, birch, maple and so on.

Eucalyptus (Eucalyptus) itself has many varieties, such as eucalyptus macrophylla, eucalyptus urophylla, eucalyptus macrophylla, eucalyptus blue, eucalyptus lemon, eucalyptus salix, eucalyptus fornix, eucalyptus red. Some eucalyptus (such as hole edge eucalyptus) is not suitable for papermaking, too high proportion of eucalyptus is not suitable for papermaking, generally less than 0.7 is appropriate. There are certain differences in the quality of various types of eucalyptus BEK, so it is necessary to understand what kind of eucalyptus BEK is made of. Generally, Brazil's BEK is mainly made of eucalyptus grandis, Chile and Spain are mainly made of eucalyptus bleu, and China's Guangxi Liujiang Paper Factory and paper Company produces a certain amount of commercial BEK, and the raw materials are mainly lemon eucalyptus and eucalyptus grandis. Due to the wide variety of eucalyptus, coupled with regional climate differences, the quality and price of various types of eucalyptus pulp are also different, it is generally believed that the quality of Brazilian eucalyptus is the best, and the worst in Southeast Asia, but it also depends on the specific use.

acacia (also known as acacia, sweet acacia or golden acacia), as a specially developed pulping wood, has no less rapid growth and high yield effect than tropical eucalyptus, especially suitable for artificial cultivation in Southeast Asian climate, in recent years, with the rapid growth of production, Has gradually become an important option in the market, in terms of pricing, its representative brand Lovesickness has been on a par with Brazilian eucalyptus.

Broad-leaved wood of Aspen, Birch and Maple species. Hard miscella, that is, mixed hardwood miscella, that is, natural broadleaf forest, of which there are many species, it is difficult to list one by one, because most pulp mills are first cut down hard miscella forest after planting plantation, hard miscella forest will not recover by itself, so a future trend is that the number of natural hard miscella forest will gradually reduce, at the same time, because the logging of hard miscella forest will seriously damage the natural ecology, In the long term, the supply of hardwood pulp will gradually decrease and eventually disappear, as most of the pulp mills that cut hardwood pulp have a poor reputation and are under increasing environmental pressure.