ABB has officially opened a global research and development (R&D) centre for the pulp and paper industry in Dundalk, Ireland.
Left to right: Dara Calleary T.D. (Minister of State at the Department of Enterprise Trade & Employment), Mary Buckley (Interim CEO, IDA Ireland), Joachim Braun (Division President, Process Industries, ABB), Stefano Cinquina (Business Line Manager, Pulp & Paper, ABB) and Michael Kerley (Global Technology Manager for ABB Pulp & Paper).
The new multi-million-dollar ABB Dundalk R&D Centre is at the heart of company’s automation and digital offering for the sector and will be home to the ongoing evolution of the ABB Quality Control System (QCS).
New ideas and products will be piloted and managed into the suite of applications for improved quality in the complex world of papermaking, where manufacturers often struggle to balance ever-changing variables to produce paper to customers’ particular specifications. This will include solutions for measuring, adjusting, optimising and controlling quality as the paper web makes its way through the paper machine to form the end-products, including paper and board.
ABB’s vision for the centre is to develop solutions that respond to global trends and can meet the sustainability goals of the rapidly evolving industry. A new QCS, for example, has the potential to reduce annual waste (production losses) by two percent or more per paper machine. This can impact a mill’s sustainability goals by also reducing annual emissions for each machine by the same two percent, or 1.1 kt CO2, using the assumption of 57 kt CO2 emissions for a typical paper/board/tissue machine.
This project is supported by the Irish Government through IDA Ireland.
