Securing the future of tissue manufacturing in New Zealand
Industry
Manufacturer of tissue and hygiene products
Location
Kawerau
“These projects also anchor technical knowledge in the region – both within Essity, but also amongst the many local suppliers that support the Kawerau mill’s operations.”
– Essity Mechanical Engineer Matthew Bain
“We employ over 200 people here from the local community and it’s going to secure jobs for years ahead.”
– Matthew Bain
During a visit to Essity in Kawerau, the EMA’s Nicholas Russell met with mechanical engineer Matthew Bain to explore how the mill is using the region's geothermal resources to secure the future of tissue manufacturing in New Zealand.
Overview
Tissue manufacturing needs three core building blocks: fibre, water and energy.
Kawerau has easy access to all three. For Matthew Bain, Mechanical Engineer at Essity, those advantages are fundamental to why tissue manufacturing has remained in the Bay of Plenty town of for more than half a century.
“Kawerau is the perfect place for tissue manufacturing,” he says. “We have the fibre source from our surrounding forests. We have the water supply from the Tarawera River. And we also have the energy supply, both in electricity and the geothermal energy under our feet.”
That combination has helped sustain one of the country’s most strategically important manufacturing sites. Essity’s Kawerau mill is the country’s only local tissue manufacturer, making paper on site and converting it into finished products including Purex, Sorbent, Handee and Tork used in homes, schools, hospitals, hotels and workplaces.
The site manufactures around 55,000 tonnes of tissue and paper towel products each year and employs about 200 people in Kawerau and 300 nationally.
Tissue manufacturing is capital intensive, technically demanding and energy hungry. Essity uses electricity, geothermal energy and gas in its operations. Electricity runs the motors, pumps, rollers, vacuum systems and moving parts that keep the paper machines operating. Steam is used in the drying process, while natural gas has historically been used to create hot air for the final stages of drying.
Drying tissue is one of the most energy-intensive stages of paper production. Although much of the water is removed mechanically, the final stages require significant heat. Traditionally, that heat has been supplied by fossil fuels.
Essity has completed a major transition at Kawerau that has converted one of its two large tissue machines to operate using geothermal steam as its sole heat source, eliminating the need for natural gas on that machine. A tissue machine operating wholly on geothermal steam is described by Essity as a world first. The $20 million upgrade has helped reduce the site’s carbon footprint, with the switch equivalent to removing roughly 2,200 cars from New Zealand roads annually.
Recent industrial closures and persistently high energy costs have intensified concerns about deindustrialisation in New Zealand. Essity’s Kawerau project demonstrates that energy transition, done well, can be about competitiveness as much as carbon. It can reduce exposure to fossil fuel risk, improve operating efficiency and help keep skilled jobs in the regions.
Why is papermaking so energy hungry?
The process begins with large bales of wood pulp. These are conveyed into a pulper, where they are mixed with water to form a liquid pulp slurry. That slurry is then piped to the paper machines and distributed evenly across the width of the machine. From that point, the work of papermaking is largely removing water.
The sheet begins as a mixture that is mostly water. The machine first uses gravity to remove moisture, then vacuum systems, then mechanical pressure, and finally heat. The goal is to turn a wet pulp slurry into a large, dry parent reel of tissue paper. Those reels, which weigh around four tonnes, and are then transferred to converting lines where they are turned into finished products.
The paper machines have been operating for decades, with one commissioned in the 1960s and the other in the 1970s. They have been upgraded repeatedly over time, but they remain major pieces of industrial equipment, around five metres wide and more than 80 metres long. Originally built with British equipment, they have since been upgraded through a series of rebuilds and efficiency projects. More recent upgrades have relied heavily on specialist suppliers from Italy, particularly from Lucca, a town well known globally as a hub for tissue and paper machine manufacturing.
Industrial transition is rarely a matter of simply swapping one fuel for another. The machines at Kawerau are complex systems. Heat, vacuum, sheet speed, moisture removal, product quality and machine stability all interact. Changing the energy source for a drying system means proving that the machine can still produce high-quality tissue reliably at commercial scale.
The geothermal conversion involved a 12-week rebuild with international specialists, local contractors, civil works, installation and commissioning. The size of that investment points to one of the central challenges for large manufacturers: even when a project makes sense technically, it still has to win capital.
Partnering for success
Essity is a global company, and Bain says the Kawerau mill had to make its business case to decision-makers beyond New Zealand.
“All capital applications for any project go through great scrutiny within the business to decide where that capital funding is spent.”
The project had to show that it was technically sound, commercially viable, aligned with the company’s emissions goals and capable of delivering the promised benefits. That’s where its partnership with the Energy Efficiency & Conservation Authority (EECA) proved valuable.
EECA’s role is to help New Zealand businesses improve energy performance, reduce emissions and strengthen competitiveness. Bain says the relationship with EECA started years before the geothermal transition.
“In 2020, we engaged with EECA to develop our Energy Transition Accelerator. The objective was to create a practical roadmap for reducing emissions while improving energy efficiency and maintaining the site’s long-term competitiveness. This set the pathway for our site to achieve our emission reduction goals.”
The process started with understanding energy use across the mill and identifying opportunities to reduce demand. While few manufacturers have access to Kawerau’s geothermal resource, every business can benefit from the same disciplined approach: understand the energy system, improve efficiency, evaluate options carefully and build a robust investment case before committing capital.
One of the first major projects focused on electricity consumption. Tissue manufacturing relies on large motors, pumps and vacuum systems, with vacuum technology. These systems are also among the biggest consumers of electricity.
With EECA support, Essity replaced the vacuum system on one of its paper machines.
“The equipment that we sourced from Finland was new technology in New Zealand and reduced our power consumption by over 700kW, which is massive,” Bain says.
The reduction was roughly equivalent to the electricity consumption of more than 600 New Zealand homes.
EECA’s support extended beyond technology. The agency also helped fund an energy graduate engineer role focused on identifying and delivering efficiency opportunities. That dedicated resource ensured energy projects remained a priority rather than competing with the day-to-day demands of running a major manufacturing site.
A long-term future
The environmental benefits are substantial. Essity has reduced the Kawerau facility’s carbon footprint by around 25%, contributing to a 66% reduction in site emissions since 2009. The upgraded tissue machine alone has cut emissions by more than 5,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide annually, equivalent to removing around 2,200 cars from New Zealand roads.
The Kawerau mill has been part of the region’s industrial landscape for decades. Bain says by improving efficiency, reducing energy risk and extending the life of existing assets, the investment helps strengthen the long-term future of the site.
“We employ over 200 people here from the local community and it’s going to secure jobs for years ahead.
“These projects also anchor technical knowledge in the region – both within Essity, but also amongst the many local suppliers that support the Kawerau mill’s operations.”