OREANDA-NEWS. April 21, 2008. The North-West Timber Company submitted to Ministry of Natural Resources of the Russian Federation the set of documents necessary for consideration of Proposal to exclude Neman Pulp-and-Paper Mill from HELCOM’s list of Hot Spots.

The enterprises polluting the Baltic Sea area are considered to be “Hot Spots”. Such enterprises are included into the list of Baltic Sea Joint Comprehensive Environmental Action Program (JCP) issued in 1992. According to HELCOM classification NPPM is Hot Spot No 50. The major criteria for inclusion or deletion of Hot Spots are the correspondence of emissions and discharges from the enterprises to HELCOM Recommendations.

“In 2001 HELCOM analyzed the enterprise’s data, and we had little to boast. When Neman PPM had been included into the North-West Timber Company, the mill was technologically out-of-date. The waste water treatment and the treatment of emissions were carried out as a mere formality. The unreasonably huge volumes of wood, steam, water and electric power were consumed due to the old-fashioned equipment and technologies. When bleaching cellulose, NPPM used chlorine, the heat-station worked on fuel oil, the bark was bulked in the refuse dump of huge size. There were the other problems as well decreasing economic results of the enterprise and influencing negatively on the environment and people’s health. Nevertheless for the last years the NWTC has realized the comprehensive program for reconstruction and modernization of the enterprise. At present we have reached the correspondence to HELCOM Recommendation 16/4 (Reduction of Emissions into the atmosphere from the pulp and paper industry), HELCOM Recommendation 17

/9 (Reduction of Discharges from the sulphite pulp industry), HELCOM Recommendation 25/2 (Reduction of Emissions and Discharges from industry by effective use of BAT). Taking into consideration all the above, in our opinion Neman Pulp-and-Paper Mill meets completely the criteria for deletion of Hot Spots. We hope that having considered all the enclosed documents, the Ministry of Natural Resources of the Russian Federation and HELCOM will make a comprehensive decision”, Deputy General Director for External Relations of the NWTC Yury Murashko said.

Today in fact NPPM is the only in Russia pulp-and-paper mill that has completely refused completely to use chlorine and chlorine compounds in production. The transfer to TCF-bleaching technology in which we use innocuous hydrogen peroxide has completely excluded chlororganic components and decreased the other pollutants content. All the paper factories and the cellulose department are equipped with local waste water treatment facilities, the vacuum-evaporate plant has been restored that made it possible to exclude the pulping liquor discharges almost fully. The effectiveness of decontaminating of waste waters has reached 97 %. The transfer of the heat-station to natural gas and reconstruction of the bark-boiler has made it possible to exclude completely the use of fuel oil and to decrease sulfur dioxide and carbon oxide discharges, and to start liquidation of the bark refuse dump.

When reconstructing and modernizing Neman PPM we used all the existing BAT-technologies recommended by HELCOM. Those were in particular dry debarking, closed screening, oxygen delignification, and the use of ecologically safe chemicals. As a result the discharges and emissions have occurred even lower by the major criteria than the indices recommended by HELCOM. Thus at present AOX content is not more than 0,02 kg/tone (HELCOM Recommendation is 0,5 kg/tone), Tot-P is 0,004 kg/tone (HELCOM Recommendation is 0,5 kg/tone), Tot-N is 0,56 kg/tone (HELCOM Recommendation is 0,7 kg/tone).