FIRST Rebuilds OCC Stock Prep System with Kadant
VITRY-LE-FRANÇOIS, November 15, 2007 – Kadant Lamort SAS, a subsidiary of Kadant Inc. (NYSE: KAI), and FIRST for Industrial Development Ltd., an Egypt-based paper company, announce the successful start-up of a 260 tpd OCC stock preparation system at FIRST. The Kadant supply included equipment for pulping and pulper cleaning, coarse cleaning and screening, and fine screening with 0.2 mm slotted basket .
“As part of its initiative to produce high quality testliner from local and US-sourced OCC, FIRST challenged us to design an innovative stock preparation system that would result in low fibre loss, reduced water and chemical consumption, and was capable of dealing with high amounts of sand pollution in the raw material. I am proud to say that we met these challenges and helped FIRST achieve its rebuild goals,” said Alain Serres, president of Kadant Lamort.
According to Amr Darwish, business development director at FIRST, “The combination of Kadant’s technical excellence and the local expertise of the Egyptian team made this project a success. From the drawing board to the erection of the hardware, everything went smooth. I want to thank Kadant’s project team for their dedication and professional work.”
The basic concept Kadant applied to this application began with the modification of the UP sreen and K-TEK® basket operating as a fractionator. This permitted the flexibility needed for the flow of both short and long fibres. The existing Kadant pulper uses a Vokes™ rotor with conventional 12 mm hole perforated plates integrated with Hydrapurge™ reject cleaning system and Selectpurge™ reject screen. The Hydrapurge system features a strong defibering action to allow part of its output to be accepted and resulting an the increase in pulping capacity. The Selectpurge equipment features a heavy-duty trommel drum to recover fibre and reject fibre-free contaminants.
The two-stage Liquid Cyclone units and the Float Purger™ stock cleaning system eliminate flakes resulting from AOCC and reject the fibre-free light contaminants. This is followed by the elimination of the light contaminants prior to being impacted by the rotor action. Additional disc filter on long fibre and paper machine excess water and a new Fiber-NET™ multi-stage pressure screen provided FIRST for Industrial Development with the ability to reduce water consumption and to reuse the filtered water in shower applications.
Kadant Lamort SAS, based in Vitry-le-François, France, is a leading fiberline process equipment supplier that designs, manufactures, and services equipment used in virgin and recycled paper and paper machine approach-flow applications. In addition, the company supplies paper machine doctoring equipment and other papermaking accessories, as well as filtration, formation, and cleaning and conditioning systems.
Kadant Inc. is a leading supplier to the global pulp and paper industry, with a range of products and services for improving efficiency and quality in pulp and paper production, including paper machine accessories and systems for stock preparation, fluid handling, and water management. Our fluid-handling products are also used to optimize production in the steel, rubber, plastics, food, and textile industries. In addition, we produce granules from papermaking byproducts for agricultural and lawn and garden applications. Kadant is based in Westford, Massachusetts, with revenues of $342 million in 2006 and 2,000 employees in 16 countries worldwide. For more information, visit www.kadant.com.
The following constitutes a “Safe Harbor” statement under the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995: This press release contains forward-looking statements that involve a number of risks and uncertainties, including forward-looking statements about our products and technologies. Important factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those indicated by such statements are set forth under the heading “Risk Factors” in Kadant’s quarterly report on Form 10-Q for the period ended September 30, 2007. These include risks and uncertainties relating to our dependence on the pulp and paper industry; significance of sales and operation of manufacturing facilities in China; international sales and operations; competition; our debt obligations; restrictions in our credit agreement; future warranty claims associated with the discontinued operation; our acquisition strategy; future restructurings; risks associated with our fiber-based products business; protection of patents and proprietary rights; fluctuations in quarterly operating results; and anti-takeover provisions. We undertake no obligation to publicly update any forward-looking statement, whether as a result of new information, future events, or otherwise.
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