Paper Process

Paper Process Paper is made from one of Earth's greatest renewable resources-trees. We use two raw materials to create our newsprint and publishing papers: wood chips and recycled newspapers and magazines. Residual wood chips, which remain after sawmills have optimized the cutting of logs into lumber, are sent to our Longview, Washington, manufacturing facility in railcars. In addition, 1.5 million recycled newspapers and magazines are received into our facility every day from all over the western United States.

Thermo Mechanical Pulp The wood chips undergo a modern process called thermo mechanical pulping, which creates a high-yield pulp that is 100 percent more efficient than pulp derived from the conventional kraft process. This method softens the chips with steam and separates them into fibers using two large counter-rotating disks.

Recycled Paper Recycled newspapers and magazines are sorted in a large rotating drum to remove any plastic, glass, and metal. Water is added and the material becomes pulp slurry. To remove old ink, the pulp slurry is put in a state-of-the-art flotation tank and tiny air bubbles are injected. The ink particles float to the surface and are skimmed off. The pulp is then washed and the water is squeezed off before hydrogen peroxide is added to make the pulp whiter.

Producing Paper Pulp slurry is still 99 percent water. To create paper, the slurry is sprayed onto large moving screens that form a continuous sheet and moisture is removed using presses and steam dryers, reducing the water content to about 8 percent. At this point, the material looks and feels like the paper you expect. It is then wound on a reel and transferred to an overhead crane, which takes it to a winder. The paper is rewound onto smaller rolls and cut into specified widths for each customer. After being wrapped and labeled with customer information, the paper is ready to ship to publishers and printers throughout North America, Japan, and the rest of the world.

Distribution

Each day, we produce newsprint equivalent to a 30-foot-wide sheet that extends from Seattle to Miami. This paper is stored in our six-acre shipping warehouse, which uses state-of-the-art vacuum trucks to minimize damage to rolls. A ship loaded with about 13,500 rolls of paper departs for Japan from our mill every two weeks. And we load an average of 45 trucks and 10 railcars daily. NORPAC paper is a sound environmental choice. It comes from a natural, renewable resource and is recycled and reused time after time. In fact, you could receive some of the same wood fiber in your daily newspaper as many as 10 times.