The 10-hour odyssey - From wood to paper

Paper has come to occupy a very central role in our everyday life. India consumes about 10 million tonne of paper annually, and this is set to grow at 10 per cent every year. However, India's per capita consumption of paper, paper boards and packaging is still a low five kg compared to China's 45 kg and the USA's 300 kg.

Have you ever wondered how paper is made?  Paper making is a complex process. It is material, technology and water intensive. Every tonne of paper produced requires 5.5 tonne of inputs and as much as 50 kilolitre of freshwater. In simple terms it is all about converting a brownish hard wood into a pure soft white sheet of paper.

It takes 10 hours for wood to transform.  Here's how it is done.

-Text by N Madhavan

ITC's Bhadrachalam plant 350 kilometres from Hyderabad is India's largest integrated paper mill.  It has the capacity to produce 2.5 lakh tonne of pulp and 4.5 lakh tonne of paper and paper boards.

-Text by N Madhavan

Wood being unloaded at the stock yard in the factory.

-Text by N Madhavan

The wood is then fed into a disc chipper which chops it into tiny chips about 20 to 25 mm in size.-Text by N Madhavan

This is the chip digester. It is here the lignin in the woodis dissolved and softened.

 

-Text by N Madhavan

The three-stage washing process to remove chemicals and lignin. Lignin needs to be removed to make the paper smooth and flexible.

-Text by N Madhavan

An employee checks the wood pulp after it has been washed. It is powder-ish in form but still brown in colour.

-Text by N Madhavan

Bleaching is done to make the pulp white. ITC employs the latest chlorine free process to bleach the pulp.

-Text by N Madhavan

This is how a bleached pulp will look. It is now ready to be fed into the paper mill.

-Text by N Madhavan

At the paper mill, the pulp is refined and then readied for sheet formation.

-Text by N Madhavan

The sheet is being pressed.

-Text by N Madhavan

The sheet is being dried.

-Text by N Madhavan

A huge cylinder - referred as MG cylinder - polishes the paper to give it a smooth finish.

-Text by N Madhavan

The paper is then rolled into huge reels. Each reel holds up to 21,000 kgs of paper.

-Text by N Madhavan

The reels are cut to various sizes.

-Text by N Madhavan

It is then packaged.

-Text by N Madhavan

After packaging, it is stored.

-Text by N Madhavan

If you are wondering how A4 size paper is made. An A4 machine cuts the paper to size and arranges 500 sheets per bundle.

-Text by N Madhavan

It then wraps the bundle.

-Text by N Madhavan

After wrapping, it packs the bundle in boxes.

-Text by N Madhavan

And then stacks the boxes for dispatch.

-Text by N Madhavan