Photo courtesy of Kruger Inc.
The Kruger Recycling division of Kruger Inc. is on track to develop a new recovered paper storage facility in Trois-Rivières, Québec, designed to consolidate its operations in proximity to a containerboard mill it operates.
The $11.4 million project will consolidate Kruger Recycling's collection and storage operations near the Kruger Packaging containerboard mill also in Trois-Rivières, a city of 145,000 people about 100 miles north of Montréal.
Covering 1 million square feet, the planned Kruger Recycling operations center will ensure a stable fiber supply for the containerboard mill while reducing transportation-related greenhouse gas emissions, according to Kruger.
“We already recycle 100 percent of the paper and paperboard collected from residential blue bins in Trois-Rivières,” says Stéphanie Bouchard, a general manager with Kruger Recycling. “The new site will be used to consolidate operations near our main customer, the Trois-Rivières containerboard mill, and to further develop our collection route with businesses and stores, which will make the region an important recycling hub in Québec.”
Kruger says the site is strategically located at the entrance to the city and near busy highway corridors, allowing it to receive recycled material from other regions in Québec, as well as from eastern Ontario and the northern United States.
The paperboard and recycling firm refers to itself as an industry sector pioneer, having been manufacturing 100 percent-recycled containerboard since the early 1960s.
In 2017, the company invested nearly $180 million in its paperboard production facility in Trois-Rivières to modernize its operations and give it “a new future in the growing sector of 100 percent-recycled lightweight and high-strength linerboard.”
The mill annually consumes up to 450,000 metric tons of recovered paper, including old corrugated containers, according to Kruger.
Overall, the company says its Kruger Recycling network collects and processes more than 750,000 metric tons of recovered paper annually, and its mill network makes tissue products, containerboard and corrugated packaging. The company’s 6,000 employees operate from facilities in Québec, Ontario, British Columbia and Newfoundland and Labrador in Canada and in Tennessee, Maine, New York, Virginia, Kentucky and Rhode Island in the U.S.