ABB is set to provide Metsä Board with its L&W Autoline automated paper testing solution at five of the group’s mills in Finland: Kemi, Kyro, Simpele, Tako and Äänekoski.
Metsä Board is standardising its operations with ABB’s L&W Autoline, which has a recently enhanced design that requires less service while increasing uptime. Plus, L&W Autoline measures according to testing standards, minimising the needs for correlation to lab instruments. ABB’s automated paper testing solution will help the company meet its broader production and sustainable development targets. ABB and Metsä Board have worked together on numerous projects over the years; this latest group of orders builds on this history of successful collaboration with a solution known to reduce testing time by up to 90% compared with manual testing.
“ABB has proven that with this latest technology that they can enable us to reach new levels of performance in our board mills,” said Ville Jokinen, quality engineer at Metsä Board’s Tako mill. “It is with this confidence that we install L&W Autoline across our sites to maximise our investment and achieve the returns in quality and efficiencies, which will help us meet our objectives of using materials and energy resources wisely.”
ABB claims that its latest L&W Autoline is 10 times faster than manual testing, enabling rapid reduction of off-spec production. Scalable to fit any lab and extremely easy to use, the system incorporates a visual touchscreen interface, requiring minimal training. Other features include a reliable feeding system to minimise jamming; a dual test function to reduce queuing by allowing simultaneous testing; high-volume information storage, enabling identification of quality trends over time; and real-time visualisation, providing direct feedback to operators on the unit and throughout the mill.
