Experience
I've been involved in the pulp and paper industry since graduating with a degree in Pulp & Paper Technology from the University of Maine, USA in 1968. I’ve worked in engineering, project management, operations, and I am now Chief Executive of Veracel.

Process improvements
Throughout my career, the technology has continued to evolve. Brazil has continuously followed the best available technologies. Perhaps that is why the industry in Brazil is so effective. The most notable improvements have been in the environmental performance of the mills. Yet, we have not had to sacrifice yield (more usable fiber out of a tree and into the pulp) or quality (higher brightness and strength).   

Project management improvements
The advent of EPC (engineer-procure-construct) in this industry has been a tremendous boom. Before coming to Veracel, I worked at Aracruz, where we were among the first to take the “risk” of doing a project EPC (an Andritz recovery boiler).  Now, I think the risk would be in not doing it EPC.  We are improving upon the EPC concept every time we do a project. Suppliers are much more interested in EPC and behaving as partners. Andritz guarantees schedule, cost, and performance for an entire process area.  It makes our job of managing the project considerably easier and reduces our risk exposure.

Single line advantages and risks
There was a time when no mill would take the risk of having one large piece of equipment – there was built-in redundancy with at least two of everything. The thinking was, “If we have only one, we have nothing.” Times have changed. Suppliers like Andritz now have the technology and competence to make complete lines. Since we want to save money by making lower cost investments, we chose the single-line concept. If we now have only one, we have everything we want. This mill depends upon Andritz technology to make pulp. There is no backup position.

The Veracel start-up
Our start-up was excellent.  Our production is ahead of plan – we're producing more pulp than we thought we would at this point. More importantly, the quality of the pulp has been exceptional. One of the very important start-up tools was the Andritz dynamic simulator. I don't see any possibility for a new big mill to be installed in the future without the use of a simulator. I would think that the simulator paid for itself within the first few days of operation.  Veracel construction was completed in 17 months and six months later we are consistently achieving design capacity. It's very important to start the return on investment quickly. Every day is important.  

Perfect partner
We gave out awards after the start-up and selected two perfect partners for this project. One was the Andritz consortium for the drying machine. The team had outstanding performance in meeting our schedules and always maintained a proactive attitude if a potential problem developed. We’ve had very good cooperation.