Forestal y Papelera Concepción (FPC) recently installed Voith’s VForm hydrofoil system at its paper mill located in the city of Concepción, Chile.
Image: Voith’s VForm hydrofoil system. Photo: courtesy of Voith GmbH & Co. KGaA.
With this, the paper manufacturer has now become Latin America’s first reference for this solution.
“The starch savings in the machine’s wet end alone paid back our investment for the VForm”, says Maurício Silva, Plant Manager for Forestal y Papelera Concepción (FPC). “The VForm helped us achieve higher strength properties, which translated into chemical savings, and this paid for our investment in less than a year,” he concludes.
With the unique market advantage of offering a combination of adaptability, the VForm is a set of adjustable ceramic hydrofoils designed to improve the quality and mechanical properties of paper by promoting higher activity of the fiber suspension.
Designed and manufactured in Germany, these products also promote higher drainage, which translates into less energy consumption and possible paper weight reductions, in addition to significant fiber and filler savings in the paper production process.
The control system developed using the ComCore intelligent platform is expandable to other quality control tasks and Industry 4.0 applications, and gathers all the information on a single screen, including communication link status, information about the product being manufactured, alarms and actuator positions.
Its new LCA-600 actuators with IP67 protection class provide greater operational flexibility by allowing manufacturers to produce customized paper weights and grades in a larger operating window.
Voith’s know-how and experience as a full-line supplier to the paper industry was instrumental in understanding the customer’s needs and the project’s requirements.
Antonio Lemos, President of Voith Paper Products & Services for South America
“We are very pleased to bring this first reference to Latin America, since it allows us to showcase all the benefits that this solution brings to customers – both in terms of costs reductions as well as paper quality improvements,” says Antonio Lemos, President of Voith Paper Products & Services for South America. “What’s more, Forestal y Papelera Concepción ordered two other VForm hydrofoils in February 2019. That is another clear sign of the customer’s absolute satisfaction with our product – as well as of the success of the first units we installed in their mill,” he says.
Source: Company Press Release