Stora Enso has invested €9 million ($9.6 million) in a new paper recycling sorting line at its Langerbrugge Mill in Ghent, Belgium. The Paper for Recycling (PfR) sorting line from Austria-based Redwave has been installed in a new 5,200-square-meter (56,000-square-feet) building.

Stora Enso’s Langerbrugge mill produces printing and writing paper products made from 100 percent recovered fiber collected within a 300-kilometer radius of Ghent. “We call it the urban forest,” says Chris De Hollander, managing director of the mill. “We get the fiber we need by collecting old paper from the households; no wood is used here to produce paper.”

The Stora Enso Langerbrugge paper mill also has been a 65 percent majority shareholder of Vlar Papier since 2005. Vlar Papier in Belgium is active in the procurement of paper and board through municipal recycling collection programs.

“Operating the two Vlar Papier PfR (Paper for Recycling) sorting lines on our premises ensures that about 40 percent of the Langerbrugge mill’s need for high-quality sorted paper is provided directly to the mill,” says De Hollander. “On a yearly basis, we need 700,000 metric tons of high-quality sorted paper to make 550,000 metric tons of uncoated magazine paper and newsprint. This kind of local sourcing and handling is cost-efficient and sustainable,” he adds.

The new PfR plant has been designed, manufactured, built and commissioned by Redwave as a turnkey project. At the plant, Vlar Papier sorts the inflow of raw material into two fractions: paper and board.

The sorting plant has been designed for an inflow of 36 metric tons per hour with the flexibility to increase to 40 metric tons per hour for specific inflow mixes.

In a news release, Redwave says the PfR system in Ghent includes “advanced control concepts [and] online quality monitoring and plant optimization tools.” The Redwave PMCS (Plant Monitoring and Control System) has been “specially developed to control, monitor and optimize the entire treatment,” says the company.

Also part of the system are “a large primary dosing bunker, a corrugated cardboard screen, fine screens, paper spikes, optical sorting Redwave machines and a recovery line to obtain a maximum paper yield from the combined paper and board input fraction.”

Says De Hollander, “This Paper for Recycling sorting line is the cream of the crop.”

A video clip of the Redwave Stora Enso Ghent installation can be found at www.youtube.com/watch?v=mD7VGjqfrzo.