Metso and Papierfabrik Schoellershammer have together succesfully started up Europe’s first spray sizing unit for the mill’s swing testliner and recycled fluting machine, PM 5, located in Düren, Germany. The new two-sided spraying unit was installed in an existing pond size press, originally delivered by Metso in 2005. After the start-up on May 12, 2012, the production line has produced sellable paper from day one and has since been able to successfully produce its full product range with the new equipment.  

“This is a big step forward in terms of runnability. Thanks to higher solids we can now also use increased starch amounts without compromising production capacity. We foresee considerable savings in steam consumption as well,” says Konrad Franken, Production Manager at Papierfabrik Schoellershammer.

The 5-m-wide PM 5 produces testliner and fluting grades in the basis weight range of 90-170 g/m² at the maximum production speed of 1,100 m/min.

Metso has been developing the spray sizing technology for several years, and the work has its foundations in Metso’s long tradition with film sizing, water sprays and earlier spray coating developments. The technology is protected by several international patents and applications. In 2008 Metso started up the first one-sided prototype unit of spray sizing for fluting in Korea. Since then the company has delivered five spray sizing projects in total in Asia, three of them with two-sided spray. “We see that spray sizing is clearly the future method for surface sizing of containerboards and it has potential benefits in other applications as well,” says Topi Tynkkynen, RTD Project Manager at Metso. Spray sizing has a major role in Metso’s new OptiSizer family, to be launched to the market in 2012.