Logging and Paper

Only one stop on our itinerary for a Wednesday, and that was Klabin Paper Products, located in the heart of the Parana. It was forestry, pulp and paper products conglomerate that is located around the world. We visited their primary South American facility on its 270,000 Ha property. That converts to almost 700,000 acres of forest land. We got the grand tour of several different divisions in the corporation. From research, to pharmaceutical products for the nearby town, to the company cafeteria and finally the biomass and paper manufacturing building.

We all thought that it was a unique opportunity to get a tour inside the paper processing plant. The tour guide let us get just a couple yard from the giant spools that were shooting the paper down the pressing line at 900 meters per second. We walked down the 300 yard building to the end of the process and saw the giant paper rolls that made the finishing product. The finished rolls weighted up to 60 tons, and were the size of a semi trailer. The next room we went in was the storage facility and it housed thousands of these massive rolls. It is a hard image to describe, but there was a railway going through the building, and it had ten cars that they were loading up with these rolls. I would estimate that 20,000 paper rolls were housed there, stacked up to 6 high.

The electricity for the entire facility was equal to three times a town that we stayed in, which had a population of 350,000 inhabitants.

Before our day began, most of us had little background knowledge about what went into the paper that we use on a daily basis. But today we found out that it takes a lot of land, labor and capital to the paper we use.

Tomorrow is another farmer cooperative, and then off to Iguazzu Falls!!