Pulp and paper industry diversifies the use of planted forest

The Brazilian pulp and paper industry has emerged as an island of excellence in a country well beyond economic development, which has resulted in the sector accounting for half of the budget surplus of $10.5 billion during the first nine months of the year.

Brazil is the world’s largest producer of short cellulose fibre and ranks ninth in paper production, but it is recognized in rankings on sustainability of planted forests and wood processing with a low production cost and a high productivity index.

Management models aimed at preserving biological diversity, the challenge of a clean production cycle that drove companies to seek energy self-sufficiency, and the use of renewable resources help ensure environmental balance. The effects have social impacts. Diversification in the economic use of planted forest and the engagement of small producers through partner programmes create job growth and income opportunities, modernize work relationships, and expand the exchange of information.

The numbers are exemplary – economically, socially, and environmentally. The paper and cellulose industry represents 5.5% of Brazil’s GDP and generates 4.2 million jobs. The 7.74 million hectares of trees planted in the country were responsible for a stock of approximately 1.69 billion tons of carbon dioxide (tCO2).

According to the Brazilian Tree Industry (IBÁ), which represents the industry, Brazil alone had the largest carbon stocks in the world with 12% of the planet’s forests. Sixty-five percent of each hectare planted with trees for industrial use are earmarked for preservation, compared to just 7% for farming. According to the IBÁ, the industry accounts for 5.8 million hectares of restored areas. “The industry helped a lot in restoring the Atlantic rain forest areas. They already took care of a deforested area”, said Mauro Armelin, superintendent of conservation at WWF Brazil, the Brazilian branch of the global environmentalist network. This effort is significant, given the loss of vegetation coverage on the planet. In 1990, the Earth had 4,128 million hectares of forest. In 2015, it was 3,999 million hectares. The green areas that occupied 31.6% of the land mass in 1990 were reduced to 30.6% in 2015, according to the United Nations (UN) study, “Global Forest Resources Assessment 2015 – How are the world's forests changing?”.

“If cattle farming adopted the industry standard for paper and cellulose, the Amazon would be in a much better situation”, said Armelin, from WWF. “Brazil is number one in the world when it comes to expertise in the paper and cellulose industry. All of that is already economically and socially sustainable”, affirms Elizabeth Carvalhaes, president of the Brazilian Tree Industry (ÍBA), which represents 61 companies and nine government entities related to products originating from the cultivation of planted trees.

The evaluation done by Carvalhaes on excellence has backing. A hectare in Brazil produced 39 cubic metres of short-fibre eucalyptus in a six-year cycle. Chile, ranking second in the world, produced twenty cubic metres per hectare, but in a cycle where a tree takes twenty years to grow, according to the report, “Papel e Celulose” (Paper and Cellulose), from the Research and Economic Studies department of Banco Bradesco, from September of this year. In Sweden and Finland, the plantation takes 35-40 years to develop and productivity per acre fell to seven cubic metres.

Fíbria, which produces 5.3 million tons of cellulose and paper annually in four industrial units that generated a net income of R$ 7.084 billion in 2014, developed a risk occurrence map of eucalyptus diseases and forest management actions to avoid, for instance, erosion caused by flooding.

The company develops, in all of its units, species that are capable of supporting extreme climates. Technological tools monitor the cultivation’s growth second-by-second, with carbon balances and efficiency measurement in the use of water and energy. The company evaluates its vulnerability to climate change from the perspective of the entire value chain and adopts the principle of precaution in managing and operating industrial and forest activities.

Re-using water, creating inventories of greenhouse gas emissions (GHG), with a focus on cellulose’s carbon footprint, conservationist practices in road building and resilient bridge construction are among the measures adopted by the company.

Suzano, which operates in 897 thousand hectares of forest areas and six industrial units and recorded revenue amounting to R$ 7.3 billion in 2014, used its subsidiary, FuturaGene, to clear a strain of genetically-modified eucalyptus for commercial use, promising productivity increases and reduced carbon gas emissions. In the Imperatriz factory, in Maranhão in the Northeast region, a burner system allows for all the primary mud from the biomass boiler to be used as an alternative fuel. Since last year, the company’s community councils have stimulated local development, encouraging professional qualification.

Part of the R$ 5.8 billion that Klabin is investing in its new cellulose factory in Ortigueira, in Paraná in the Southeast region, which will be inaugurated next year with capacity to produce 1.5 million ton, will be earmarked for a private thermal power plant which will ensure energy sustainability for the entire company. The company, which has more than 239 thousand hectares of planted area and a production capacity of 3.5 million tons of paper and cellulose in 14 industrial units in Brazil and one in Argentina, has reduced fossil fuel consumption used in steam generation for wood pulping, to a quarter. Re-use processes and closed water circuits have reduced consumption of the resource by half.

The company, which had a net income of R$ 4.89 billion last year, also promotes innovation for increasing forest productivity. Mosaic planting, with part of the space occupied by planted forests and another part by native vegetation, preserves the areas close to the rivers, thereby helping to create a microclimate to preserve water resources. In the research centre, 70 specialists develop 2 thousand crossbreeds per year in order to obtain hybrid species that are more resistant and productive. “We are constantly trying to close the cycle for a process that is becoming more and more sustainable”, said Francisco Razzolini, Klabin’s Director of Projects and Technology.