Jobs, Careers and Occupations

Pulp and Paper Jobs, Occupations and Careers

Pulp and Paper

Pulp and paper companies cultivate and/or manufacture and/or distribute paper and/or paper-related products from wood pulp and other fibers.

Pulp and paper occupations include all positions in the papermaking industry, including pulp mill managers, woodyard superintendents, pulp chemists, pulp and paper operators, pulp line personnel, pulp sales representatives, pulp transport specialists, paper mill supervisors and paper sales personnel. Also includes foresters, lumber traders, forest practices officers, arborists and other positions relating to tree planting, harvesting and sawmills.

The global pulp and paper industry is dominated by North American (United States, Canada), northern European (Sweden, Finland) and East Asian countries (such as Japan). Australasia and Latin America also have significant pulp and paper industries. Both Russia and China are expected to be key in the industry's growth over the next few years.

A paper mill is a factory devoted to making paper from wood pulp and other ingredients using a Fourdrinier Machine or similar apparatus. These establishments have been noted for producing an obnoxious smell in the general surroundings.

The undesirable odor (usually at pulp mills, which are a little different from paper mills) is caused principally by process by-products, specifically the reduced sulfur gases resulting from the cooking process. The Kraft process of reducing wood logs to their fiber constituent is primarily responsible for the odor, as opposed to the sulfite process.

Paper mills can be fully integrated mills or smaller processing mills. The integrated mill will receive the whole forest log (or wood chips), process it down to the individual fiber level and into a 4% (approximately) pulp slurry, then process that pulp slurry into a sheet of paper. Non-integrated mills cannot process the log or wood chips but instead purchase preprocessed pulp slurry in a dried and baled form, known as market pulp, from pulp mills. The pulp bales are then rehydrated into a 4% solution in order to be processed into a sheet of paper.

The modern paper mill uses large amounts of energy, water and wood in a highly efficient and extremely complex series of processes, using modern and sophisticated controls technology to produce a sheet of paper that can be used in incredibly diverse ways.

Pulp and Paper Related Industries

• Engineering
• Operations
• Printing
• Quality Control