Voith Paper reports a very successful start-up of the rebuilt supercalender for production line 8 at Sappi, one of the world's leading manufacturers of coated woodfree papers. The two supercalenders, SK 3 and SK 4, equipped with a Voith Paper flying splice, went back into operation precisely on time, achieving a record production of 1,000 t/day right from start-up.

The study conducted by Voith Paper in the preliminary stages of the project showed that the existing capacity bottleneck in calendering could be eliminated by retrofitting the two calenders with flying splices. In mid-year, 2001, with an objective to significantly increase production in Lanaken, Sappi placed an order with Voith Paper for the modernization of the two supercalenders. Voith Paper successfully met the challenge of an extremely tight five-month delivery time set by Sappi.

Sappi's satisfaction with the way the project was handled can be summed up by the comments of the mill management at Lanaken: "The cooperation between Sappi and Voith was exemplary. Everything went off like clockwork from the very beginning. The fact that we were able to calender 1,000 tons right from the time of restarting of the rebuilt calenders was, of course, the crowning achievement".