Cross-functional, pro-active collaboration at Stanger Mill

Adapting our business to COVID-19 at Stanger Mill

COVID-19 led to the closure of borders, airports and trading ports. And this, in turn, led to the shutting down of almost all the supply chain channels for the sale of printing and writing paper, to a point where Stanger Mill was forced to take commercial downtime.

The Sappi Southern Africa sales and marketing team moved swiftly to re-establish local and regional supply chains by expanding the Sappi portfolio of grades. One key grade identified was bleached PrimePak. The PrimePak grade has a strategic advantage in that demand is non-cyclical, due to its end-use applications for packaging food staples such as flour, sugar and maize meal.

Diversifying our portfolio

The Sappi Technology Centre (STC) and Sales and Marketing teams together with Stanger Mill, conducted a market competitive analysis to gather insights into the quality and composition of paper required in this market, as well as potential customers and the demand gap left by reduced imports.

Stanger Mill uses bagasse pulp (sugar cane waste residue) in the fibre mix. This provides a cost advantage, but simultaneously, the short fibre length compromises the much-needed strength properties for PrimePak grades.

A prime solution

To overcome this challenge, the STC evaluated different furnish blends from both a cost and strength perspective and arrived at a suitable market pulp.

The first mill trial was successfully run in July 2020 and the team is currently awaiting the results of customer trials to enable further product optimisation.

Stanger Mill
Stanger Mill is unique in South Africa in that it uses bagasse as its basic raw material in the manufacture of office paper and tissue wadding.
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