PulPaper 2014 report
Helsiniki turned even more international last week when 9428 visitors from 72 countries arrived to visit the 453 exhibitors at PulPaper 2014. We were of course there with a huge Flow Scanner mockup and met a wealth of interesting people from the pulp and paper industry.
The organizers made an extra effort this year with a big Gala Event, celebrating the Finish Paper Engineers Associations’ 100 year anniversary. Great location, good food and loads of people – maybe a crash course in Finish would have been helpful to fully appreciate the show. Next time we’ll be better prepared! Kiitos anyway!
Will you dress in wood next year?
One of the big trends this year was the increasing focus on using forest biomass for even more interesting applications. Of course we have seen a huge focus on biomass as a fossil fuel replacement, but bio-based plastics and textile fibres are also getting more attention.
The packaging industry are improving their products with biofibres and biopolymers, achieving better and better performance. We should probably get used to the old tin can becoming pretty rare as these new packaging materials become more prevalent.
The new bioeconomy
Another trend is diversification. Finnish companies like UPM are moving away from a more traditional position of forestry and logging to finding new applications for the forest raw material. In addition to pulp, paper and biofuel, UPM is now researching novel uses for wood fibres in paints and oil drilling fluids as well as a multitude of bioplastic applications. We think the new bioeconomy will have a great future in the years to come!
For a company such as Mantex this is all interesting news as we see the demand for accurate real-time organic material analysis increasing even more. We believe that our products will truly help in the world’s effort to move away from fossil fuels to more organic and environmentally friendly industrial processes.
The next big PulPaper exhibit will take place in 2018. See you there!