A Look At the Forest Industries for the Next 25 Years

Population and pollution pressures on the earth’s limited resources over the next 25 years will necessitate greater utilization efficiency of raw materials and energy. The forest products industry may be making use of wastes by producing fermentable sugars and single-cell proteins to improve world food supplies. In the future, a shortage of capital may be one of the major limitations on new projects. Nations will have to assign priorities to major programs requiring large amounts of capital. This will effect the capital available to individual companies, and there will be strong competition for capital. In Canada, the pulp and paper industry is the most important industrial sector and largest employer, with 155 mills. Technology to improve forest yields through silviculture and full tree utilization will be important. Methods to chip the whole tree and debark the chips can increase the forest yield by 15 to 20 percent. If chemicals used are taken into account, more energy is consumed in producing chemical pulp than in producing mechanical pulp. However, the amount of energy used to produce mechanical pulp must also be reduced. Only a small fraction of energy put into mechanical pulping is used for fiber separation. Most is lost in the form of heat energy. Work should be aimed at methods of recycling the low quality heat produced by reducing the total energy requirement of a mechanical pulp mill.

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