Replacement of the Bank of Moscow management has been accompanied by a giant controversy. The new owners have announced that astronomical amounts are missing, which the former management had handed out by way of loans. A search for money missing from the Bank of Moscow has taken us to the city of Krasnokamsk.
According to the latest research data, birch trees that we are so intimately familiar with can provide more than sap, brooms, or firewood to heat up your steam-room. Recently, it transpired that birch can be used to manufacture top-notch paper, a high-tech prototype of sorts of ancient Russian writings on birch bark.Труд
Пока многие инвесторы только разглагольствовали о необходимости модернизации и внедрении нанотехнологий, прежнее руководство Банка Москвы вкладывало средства в перспективные технологии, которые способны принести сотни процентов прибыли. Сегодня кто-то называет эти инвестиции “сомнительным”, но только не в многотысячном городе Краснокамске, жители которого с обновлением ЦБК связывают будущее свое и своих детей и внуков.
The above was convincingly demonstrated during January, 2008, laboratory research at the University of Helsinki and Finland’s KCL center. Subsequently, birch paper was tested at a Foit-built pilot coating machine in Germany. This important conclusion was drawn: the paper has enough strength to sustain high-speed coating, meaning that industrial manufacture of paper on this base is a possibility.
The research was contracted, and paid for, by the Russian holding company Investlesprom. After the research was completed, the Investlesprom management made a decision to implement a large-scale project, LWC-Kama.
Currently, the Kama Pulp-and-Paper Mill ranks among the largest paper producers in the Urals region. Its workforce has always been pro-innovation. Close contacts with research and design institutes have fueled the enterprise’s ongoing development and improvement efforts.
Thus, already a decade ago, in 1994, the mill successfully introduced a new pulping process – modified bisulfate pulping using a mixed sodium and magnesium base. The process significantly increased pulp output and, importantly, slashed air pollution.
A recent achievement by the Kama paper manufacturers involved developing and mastering a process using hard wood to manufacture chemical thermo mechanical pulp. Adding this modern semi-finished product to paper stock instead of cellulose makes paper stronger and paper manufacture greener.
The international markets have recognized the quality of the company’s paper since 1995. The Kama paper has won the prestigious Gold Star award in Madrid, Spain.
The above precipitated the ILP management’s choice of that enterprise as a site to implement the new process to manufacture paper out of birch semi-finished product.
In 2008–2009, as part of the LWC-Kama project, large-scale testing of the entire production process was performed. The resulting lightly coated paper was tested at the Pushkin Square printing facility in the spring of 2009. The overall reviews were positive although certain deficiencies were identified compared to global leaders’ paper. Possible reasons for such deficiencies were analyzed and changes to the production process were designed to help achieve all the target quality markers.
Therefore, the Kama Pulp-and-Paper Mill did not just develop a production process but created a unique paper formula whose main production input is bleached chemical thermo-mechanical birch tree pulp. The innovative technology enables manufacture of a semi-finished product with a vast range of properties and helps meet various quality expectations on the part of the customers. Another notable fact is that LWC-Kama is the world’s first manufacture of coated paper from birch semifinished product.
The impact is multi-pronged: the “monopoly” is eroded of traditional paper manufacture, where soft-wood was used for coating. In the meantime, new prospects of using hard wood open up whereas, until recently, there has been very little hard-wood processing in Russia, despite its gigantic reserves of hard wood. Without exaggeration, this is a strategic breakthrough for the domestic pulp-and-paper industry.
In May of last year, the Pushkin Square printing facility in Moscow (which is part of the Investlesprom group) conducted yet another test of coated paper produced as part of the Vologda Paper Manufacture project and the LWC-?ama project. The paper, manufactured via unique processes on Metco pilot machines in Finland, successfully underwent printing and binding tests. The tests confirmed that the production process would be competitive as far as cost and quality.
In September 2010, an application was submitted to the Russian Patents Administration to register a patent for manufacturing the newly-developed coated paper mixture. By the way, the purity of the patent application has been verified with the assistance of Rosnano employees given that, in a number of attributes, the manufacture of the mixture may be objectively categorized as nanotechnology.
It should be noted that Russia does not make coated paper. The first such facility is being built at the Kama Pulp-and-Paper Mill site in the Perm Territory with an 85 million euro investment. The facility is designed to turn out up to 80,000 tons of lightly-coated paper a year, catering to just under 25% of the domestic demand. At the moment, about 70% of Russian magazines are printed abroad, thus helping create thousands of jobs and significant tax revenues, except not for the Russian treasury. Completion of the LWC-Kama project should radically change the situation in our favor.
All of it is becoming reality as we speak owing to direct investments by and loans from the Bank of Moscow, an old partner of Investlesprom’s. While many investors were busy paying lip service to the need for modernization and introduction of nanotechnology, the former Bank of Moscow management invested in promising technology capable of returning hundreds of percent on investments.
Today, some refer to such investments as “questionable” but none of those individuals can be found among the thousands of the residents of Krasnokamsk who are pinning hopes for their own future and that of their children and grandchildren on the modernization of the local pulp-and-paper mill.
OJSC Kama Pulp-and-Paper Mill plans to put its coated paper facility into operation very soon. Equipment at the BCTMP shop is undergoing initial engineering set-up. Upon completion of the engineering set-up, the papermaking machine will be set up and the first batches of paper made. A new water conditioning and purification plant, designed and assembled by Austria’s KIWI, has become operational. The treated water exceeds, in a number of parameters, criteria set for drinking water by the sanitary regulations and standards!
What is particularly important, the Krasnokamsk project is 100% geared towards the domestic market, for import substitution purposes: no one is making coated paper in Russia. In the meantime, in 2008, pre-crisis, the domestic demand amounted to 300,000 tons, including 150,000 tons of lightly-coated paper. In analyst estimates, the demand will grow 15% p.a. to reach 600,000 tons by 2015.
The first batch of paper at what was Soviet Russia’s largest enterprise, the Kama Pulp-and-Paper Mill, was made at approximately 8PM on February 3, 1936. To celebrate, that very paper was used to print an edition of the mill’s own newspaper. The front page said, “This Edition Has Been Printed Using New Kama Paper!» The current management of the mill has postponed the celebration of the 75th anniversary to time it with a celebration to mark inauguration of Russia’s first lightly-coated birch paper facility.
One wants to believe that everything will work out well at the end of the day, both for the printing houses (they will receive proper quality paper at low prices) and for the domestic industry (which will mark a successful start and will become competitive in quality, prices and timelines), and for us, readers and “authors”, who will not have to spend extra to pay for the imported coated paper used to print books and magazines.