Paper Supplement -- Recovered Paper Quality a Key

Market prices may rise and fall, but the winners in the paper stock business are those producing a high quality product. As we move toward higher recovery rates, and municipal curbside recycling becomes an almost universal supplier of old newspapers, chronic quality problems are plaguing the paper recycling industry. Dealing with more contaminated material is expected when dealers recover recyclables from some generators and untapped sources.

Suppliers have no choice but to produce high-quality recovered paper. Mills are held to strict quality parameters when producing finished products. Recovered paper is no longer a trivial raw material supply for the industry. The need to minimize contamination in the supply is more important than ever.

In addition to product quality issues, there are yield considerations. Every pound of contaminant or moisture represents lost dollars for mills, and good fibers are lost when contaminants are removed via screening. While contaminant levels of 3 percent may seem trivial, when a mill buys more than 500 tons of paper stock a day, the yearly loss could total more than $500,000.

There are countless stories of high outthrow levels and moisture contamination from ONP sourced from municipalities. However, residential curbside recycling can produce a high quality feedstock. Many early curbside recycling programs successfully supplied ONP to washing deink newsprint mills.

These recycling mills had little tolerance for off-specification raw materials. The curbside programs in the western U.S. five to eight years ago produced No. 8 news meeting tight outthrow specifications. During the last five years, with expansion of municipal recycling and the introduction of flotation technology and better cleaning equipment requiring a mix of ONP/OMG, the industry allowed No. 8 news quality to slip dramatically.

A survey by Moore & Associates finds the average outthrow level in the western and northeastern U.S. for No. 8 news about 1 percent, higher than the grade’s specifications. In the southeast, outthrows near 2 percent to 3 percent. A large amount of these outthrows are magazines, directories and groundwood which are usable and desirable by flotation systems. However, they do not account for all outthrows.

The one feature with early curbside collection programs lacking now is an intensive level of consumer education on quality. With recycling budget cutbacks, money spent on consumer education is not available. It would be a wise investment for mills seeking better quality ONP to invest money in helping design and implement the proper consumer education programs to help communities produce high quality No. 8 news.

QUALITY PAYS

Does quality pay? During a paper recycling conference earlier this year, one Texas-based paper recycling firm complained mills don’t recognize higher-quality suppliers should be paid more for their material. While there are no set rules about premium prices for quality, it has been the experience of many dealers that high-quality suppliers make out better in the market. Whether through better movement or pricing, or through more intangible results, it pays dividends.

Sometimes there seems to be an attitude on quality of "let’s see what we can get away with this month," especially in tight markets where demand surpasses supply. The paper recycling industry still has not made bale tagging a universal practice that allows mills to track the shipper and quality. Most other product producers label their materials to identify important data such as the supplier.

When dealing with commodities, it is difficult to seek out an advantage other than price, but quality clearly can be a winner. As the industry moves toward higher recovery levels, quality will grow in importance. Quality suppliers will be noted and gain a monetary advantage. With statistical process control routine at most mills, suppliers who move forward will have an edge. At the same time, due to competitive forces in the market, quality also will be more difficult to achieve.

Specifications and methodologies for measuring contaminants and moisture-content levels need to improve. Presently, procedures for measuring moisture are inaccurate at best. It is impossible to go to a supplier and claim a moisture deduction based on spot sampling and measurement techniques that are not representative of the total load.

Moisture measurement in the paper recycling industry is hardly more than visual inspection. With technological capabilities, the industry needs more accurate and reproducible instrumentation for measuring moisture. The industry is paying a heavy price for the inability to measure this parameter accurately. A 1 percent moisture variation may cost that operation about $150,000 per year.

In the high-grade deinking sector, there is a crisis of specification – what is mixed office paper? Sorted office paper? And so on. With more new office paper deinking facilities, the quality issue becomes even murkier. Depending on their equipment design and finished product, mills may have wildly different quality standards.

Many recyclers question the wisdom of spending time and money to meet specification when prices do not compensate them. Concurrently, some dealers find extracting more cleaner fiber and selling it for a higher price causes the remaining pack to be of lower quality.

With new office paper deinking mills, the inability to process lower quality mixed office fiber adds to the quandary. Each mill has detailed specifications. The supplier complains, "Why can’t there be one universal approach?" This issue will have to sort itself out as the paper recycling industry continues to push deinking technology forward.

Having detailed many issues facing suppliers, there are issues mills have to address. As collectors source more secondary fiber, there will be quality declines. Studies show it is more cost effective to sort contaminants in the wet end during stock prep. The other approach is removal at the generation point.

Despite different philosophies and goals between buyers and sellers, goals are the same. All parties need to produce and use high quality materials to survive. Each side needs the other.