SIC 2611 Pulp Mills
SIC 2611
This category covers establishments primarily engaged in manufacturing pulp from wood or from other materials, such as rags, linters, wastepaper, and straw. Establishments engaged in integrating logging and pulp mill operations are classified according to the primary products shipped. Establishments engaged in integrated operations of producing pulp and manufacturing paper, paperboard, or products thereof are classified in SIC 2621: Paper Mills if primarily shipping paper or paper products; in SIC 2631: Paperboard Mills if primarily shipping paperboard or paperboard products; and in SIC 2611: Pulp Mills if primarily shipping pulp. Establishments primarily engaged in cutting pulpwood are classified in SIC 2411: Logging.
322110
Pulp Mills
322121
Paper (except Newsprint) Mills
322130
Paperboard Mills
Pulp mills maintain a dominant share of the U.S. market for pulp and also are very strong competitors in global markets. Followed by Canada, the U.S. pulp industry is by far the world's largest, representing roughly one-third of worldwide production. U.S. pulp mills produce a wide variety of pulps for making paper and paperboard. In 2005, the U.S. Census Bureau reported total shipment values from pulp mills to be $4.04 billion. One reason for this market strength is good economic fundamentals—U.S. pulp mills have access to low cost and abundant raw materials, boast a highly trained workforce, and operate world-class plants and equipment.
Most of the pulp made in the United States is chemical pulp, which is produced by a chemical digesting process that converts wood chips into pulp by chemically liberating the cellulose fibers from the lignin that holds them together in the wood. Mechanical pulps are made with large "grinders" that physically shred the wood pulp into individual fibers. Some processes combine elements of mechanical and chemical pulping. After the wood chips are digested or ground, they are called wood pulp. This wood pulp is cleaned, screened, and refined. Pulp to be used for white paper is bleached (otherwise the pulp retains its natural brown color). At this point, the pulp is ready to be used in papermaking. Various grades of pulp can be made from softwood trees such as southern pine, hardwood trees such as oak, or from other sources that include recovered paper, rags, or agricultural products such as cotton linters, kenaf, bagasse, or straw.
Most pulp was used in integrated pulp and paper mills, which means that the pulp mill and the paper mill were owned by the same company and operated in many cases at the same location. There were numerous smaller paper mills, however, that were not connected with a pulp mill; they purchased "market pulp" on the open market from other pulp producers. Some companies produced only market pulp; other companies sold the excess pulp that could not be used by their paper machines.
In most cases, pulp mills need to be located near their raw materials—trees or wastepaper—to minimize transportation costs. The United States has a very large growing stock of pulpwood in several areas: the Pacific Northwest, the upper Midwest, the Northeast, and the Southeast. This circumstance, combined with its efficient manufacturing base, makes the United States the leading low-cost producer of many grades of pulp throughout the world. However, by the late 1990s that position as low-cost producer was being challenged by a new generation of pulp mills, largely in South America and Southeast Asia. These mills have access to fast-growing hardwood and softwood fiber, which dramatically reduces operating costs. Many new, world-class pulp mills were built in South America and Southeast Asia in the 1990s, while none were built in the United States and Canada. This new capacity made the global pulp market very competitive and, consequently, increased the volatility of pulp prices.
While the pulping and papermaking processes are very energy intensive, the industry has become an efficient user of energy by burning its own waste byproducts, such as tree bark and spent chemicals from the pulping process. In the late 1990s the pulp and paper industry generated well over half of the energy needed to run its mills. From the early 1970s to the mid-1990s, the industry reduced oil consumption by nearly 66 percent and natural gas consumption by 10 percent while increasing production capacity by 60 percent. Some mills even generate excess power and sell it back to local utilities.
Pulp mills and paper mills use a large amount of water from lakes, rivers, and oceans. They must reuse and/or clean all of this water before it can be returned to the body of water from which it came. In the early years of the industry, pulp mills would discharge untreated waste (effluent) into the receiving body of water. Beginning in the late 1960s, however, the industry began operating under strict water use regulations that required primary, secondary, and, in some cases, tertiary treatment of wastewater. These rules were tightened considerably during the following decades. Also, to cut down on treatment costs, mills reuse a large portion of the water they used elsewhere in the pulping and papermaking process. The process of cleaning and reusing water is commonly called "closing the mill."
In the mid-1990s, it took 65 percent less water to make a ton of paper than it did about two decades earlier. The water that cannot be reused goes to large outdoor water treatment plants. By 1999 the biochemical oxygen demand (BOD) of the treated water—a measure of environmental impact—had been reduced by more than 70 percent from 1974, even though total paper production increased more than 50 percent.
The vast majority of pulp produced in the United States is considered "captive" because it is used in an integrated pulp and paper operation and is not sold on the open market. While captive pulp accounts for the majority of pulp used in the United States, much more information and documentation is available for market pulp since it is bought and sold publicly.
The percentage of virgin wood fiber used in paper and board production in the United States and other countries has been steadily declining. This decline is explained by several trends. While virgin wood fiber has long been the fiber of choice in most advanced papermaking operations, it is coming under sustained challenge from other fiber sources. For example, the use of recovered (recycled) paper is increasing dramatically and has displaced large amounts of virgin wood fiber in the pulping market. The increased use of recovered paper has been driven partly by the public's desire to reduce the amount of paper going into landfills and partly by pulp producers' realization that virgin fiber will be increasingly hard to sustain in years to come.
North American paper producers have dramatically increased their use of recovered paper in recent years. The percentage of paper recycled in the United States rose from about 30 percent (of total paper produced) in 1990 to more than 36 percent in 2005, according to the American Forest & Paper Association (AFPA). In the mid-1990s, growth in consumption of recovered paper was far outpacing the underlying capacity growth at U.S. paper and paperboard mills. U.S. mill consumption of recovered paper rose 9.2 percent in 1996, or about 2.5 times the rate of total paper and paperboard capacity growth. From 1997 to 1999, recovered paper consumption increased at an average rate of 2.9 percent, about twice the pace of paper and paperboard capacity growth during the same three-year period. The AFPA estimates that 78 percent of U.S. paper and paperboard mills used recovered paper in 2005, and that 149 mills worked exclusively with recovered paper.
Virgin wood fiber also faces a challenge from the growing use of mineral coatings and inert fillers, mainly in printing and writing papers. Producers of these grades have completed a long-term shift from acid pulp to alkaline pulp. One reason for this shift is that paper produced from acid pulp becomes brittle and breaks up over time, while alkaline papers tend to last longer. More important, however, is the fact that alkaline papermaking tends to be less expensive since it permits greater use of fillers, such as calcium carbonate, that replace a percentage of the wood fiber in the finished paper. In U.S. printing and writing papers, such as copy paper, the amount of filler can be 10 to 20 percent of the finished paper. The cost of fillers is about one third that of wood pulp, so paper mills have a financial incentive to increase their use of fillers. Papermakers use filler not only to reduce the amount of wood fiber used but also to increase the smoothness and opacity of their finished products. As techniques to use more filler are developed, wood pulp will be displaced.
While the percentage of wood pulp in finished paper products will continue to decline, the use of wood pulp will still grow—at least...
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