MiniMills Facts & Statistics

Environmental impacts of paper use:
Globally, paper manufacture accounts for:
- 20% of total wood harvest (42% of industrial iiiiharvest)
- 11% of natural forest lost since 1970
- 10% of industrial energy consumption

Demand for paper is increasing:
- Paper consumption will double by 2020
- 313 million tonnes in 2001
- 600 million tonnes by 2020

In the UK, paper consumption counts for 6% of our ecological footprint.

Each year paper use is rising by 3.5% on average - 7% in developing counties.

The BioRegional MiniMill is:
•Small, efficient, clean technology
- Ten times faster, processing in minutes rather than hours.
- Electrical energy use reduced by 50% to 90%
- Operates as a virtually closed loop through black liquor waste being converted into fuel.
- Thermal energy self sufficient
- Caustic pulping chemicals recycled
- Water use reduced by 80%

•Low capital and operating costs
- Makes pulp for the same cost as a mill 10 times the size

•Reduced technology risk
- New pulping and effluent treatment developed from existing technologies used in other industries.
- Standard technology used in the rest of the mill.

Environmental benefits of MiniMill technology:
Paper accounts for 42% of industrial forest use. The wider application of MiniMill technology will reduce pressure on the worlds forests.

Our target is to sell 74 mills over 10 years which would produce 1.66 million tonnes of pulp per annum. This would avert the need to harvest from 1.4 million hectares of natural forest, an area the size of Cornwall, Devon and Somerset combined.

An analysis of CO2 emission savings through the use of the MiniMill technology has been calculated. It shows that pulping straw in a 10,000 tonnes per annum MiniMill saves 48,000 tonnes of C02 per year when compared to the situation as it is now in China where pulp is imported and straw burned.

Our 74 MiniMills sales target by 2014 would lead to annual reductions of up to 7.5 million tonnes of C02.

Making paper from Straw:
Agricultural residues are a plentiful waste resource:
- UK - 4 million tonnes of staw available each year
- globally - 2,450 million tonnes (50% of which is o straw) could make more than 1,000 million o o tonnes of paper.
- 8% of the worlds paper is currently made from o straw.

Last updated 14th January 2008