Craig Murphy, Director and Global Service Lead for Bleaching Chemicals at Chemical Market Analytics by OPIS, framed his presentation around four regional stories — Latin America growing, China increasingly self-sufficient, North America in managed decline, and Europe under pressure — and traced how those trends are reshaping demand for the chemicals that pulp mills depend on to cook and bleach wood fibre.

Craig Murphy

Running through all of it is the Strait of Hormuz closure, which has created supply disruptions and cost pressures now working their way through chemical markets in ways the industry is still absorbing. …In the Q&A, Kelly McNamara asked which chemical market carries the greatest risk of supply disruption or price volatility for pulp producers. Murphy’s answer was sulfur — a core input to the kraft pulping process. It is a market already under structural pressure before the Hormuz closure, and one the closure is now compounding.

Ismo Nousiainen, CEO of Metsä Fibre, the world’s leading bleached softwood market pulp supplier, presented research and mill trial results making the case that northern bleached softwood kraft pulp — NBSK — remains an essential and performance-critical component in through-air-dried, or TAD,

Ismo Nousiainen

tissue production. TAD is the manufacturing technology behind premium tissue products — high-end bath tissue and kitchen towels — in which hot air rather than mechanical pressure dries the tissue web, producing significantly higher bulk, softness, and absorbency than conventional wet-pressed grades. It is the most demanding end use remaining for softwood pulp as hardwood substitution continues across other grades, and the segment where softwood’s functional properties are most clearly differentiated.

Christian Chavassieu, Managing Partner of CelCo, presented on the dissolving wood pulp market — a sector representing approximately 10% of total pulp production, with supply dynamics, competitive structures, and end-use markets that differ significantly from standard market pulp.

Christian Chavassieu

His presentation covered supply, demand, pricing, and competitive structure across the sector’s main sub-segments, with particular focus on the diverging fortunes of commodity textile grades versus specialty grades, the growing role of alternative fibres, and a live anti-dumping trade case at the US Department of Commerce whose outcome could materially reshape sourcing patterns in the US market within days of the conference.

On supply, Chavassieu noted that dissolving wood pulp capacity has grown at roughly 4.1% annually over the past decade, though that pace has slowed recently with the closure of two facilities — a GP mill in the US and the Tembec mill in Temiscaming — and only modest new capacity coming online, primarily from Brazil and a new mill in Portugal.

Jouni Martiskainen, Project Development Manager with Svante — a Vancouver-based carbon capture technology company with approximately 270 employees and nearly 20 years of development history — presented on the commercial case for carbon capture at pulp mills, covering the financial mechanisms available to support it, the technology the company has developed, and the specific projects underway in the forest products sector. …A central point in Martiskainen’s presentation was why pulp mills are particularly well positioned for carbon capture. The kraft pulping process produces black liquor, which is combusted in the recovery boiler — generating the white plume of steam visible at any kraft mill.

Jouni Martiskainen

That stack gas contains CO2 at a concentration of approximately 15%, compared to roughly 400 parts per million in ambient air. That concentration is a byproduct of the process rather than any deliberate design, but it makes pulp mills among the most efficient biogenic CO2 concentrators in the industrial landscape, significantly reducing the energy and capital required to capture and purify that CO2 to near 100% concentration for storage or utilization downstream.