Ketchikan Pulp Co.: Southeast spark plug.

• Author: Allen, June
• Position: Corporate 100 Profile - Company Profile

Ketchikan Pulp Co. (KPC) may be the least visible of Alaska's major businesses, but it is an economic powerhouse for Southeast. For 40 years the company, sitting on scenic Ward Cove north of Ketchikan, has processed low-grade logs from the Tongass National Forest to produce high-quality dissolving pulp used in the manufacture of rayon products.

In the Ketchikan area, KPC employs 943 people year-round. "We pay out $40 million in wages in the region annually," says KPC controller Ralph Lewis. "And in our immediate two zip-code city zones, we write checks to 300 separate businesses in the amount of $50 million each year."

Ketchikan Gateway Borough mayor Jim Carlton says, "We may not all understand the technical ins and outs of pulp production, but we know that the community would shrivel away if we didn't have it. A lot of our high school graduates find their first employment at the mill, some in the forest operations."

KPC's industrial complex is not the stereotypical "paper mill" spewing acrid, sulfurous waste. Instead, the mill is a modern next-generation, forest-product facility integrated with an on-site modern, computerized sawmill and another sawmill on nearby Annette Island. Chips from both sawmills are used in the facility's pulp mill process.

Hemlock and spruce from the region's Tongass National Forest are chipped and reduced by the pulping process into white squares of pulp that look like thick sheets of soft, fibrous cardboard. Called Tongacell, these sheets are baled, a little like cotton. Each year, almost 210,000 tons of the material are loaded aboard ocean-going freighters headed for markets in 20 countries around the world and by rail car and barge to domestic customers.

Tongacell is used in the creation of many products: rayon, rayon cord tires, carpets, draperies, sponges and cellophane packaging. Its specialty products include pharmaceutical goods, sterile absorbent materials used in operating rooms, dietary food additives, over-the-counter laxatives, furniture lacquers and dice.

In addition, Tongacell is added as a smoothing ingredient to ice cream to prevent the popular dessert from becoming icy. It is also the substance, called "tow" (pronounced "toe"), that is used in biodegradable cigarette filters.

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