Increasing fiber efficiency & plant performance in brownfield and recycling applications

The global paper industry is navigating a period of profound transition. Stakeholders worldwide are under growing pressure to reduce energy demand, secure fiber resources, and manage increasingly heterogeneous recovered-paper streams. Hard-to-recover paper grades, regional variations in collection quality, and the push for higher recycling quotas challenge conventional pulping lines and fiber recovery systems.

At the same time, brownfield mills must raise efficiency within existing infrastructures, often under space, energy, and investment constraints. In this environment, the repulping process becomes a decisive factor: its performance dictates fiber yield, contaminant removal, overall process stability, and energy costs.

Repulping Technology will address these current challenges and their implications for the paper and recycling industry. The presentation will outline an approach to optimizing the repulping process as a practical exploration of what measurable benefits it brings and why they matter.

We will discuss key applications in both recycling and brownfield contexts, focusing on: • Handling of hard-to-recover papers, multilayers, and variable input materials, • Achieving higher fiber yield and energy efficiency, • Increasing operational robustness and uptime through flexible system design, and • Insights from an existing recycling plant in Austria, alongside retrofit applications for brownfield paper mills and current projects.

By examining operational outcomes, the presentation will outline where and when investment in advanced repulping delivers a tangible return, technically, energetically, and economically. Participants will gain a clear picture of how modern repulping can act as an enabler for circularity, stability, and resource efficiency across the evolving paper value chain.