How paper is made: Harvest the wood

In a recent blog we started to take you through the journey of how paper is made from Eucalyptus globulus, starting at the nurseries at Viveiros Aliança in Portugal. This blog will take a look at the second part of the process; harvesting the wood.

Once the Eucalyptus globulus trees have fully grown, over a time period of approximately 12 years, they are ready to be harvested. The trees first go through the logging process where they are stripped of their low branches in the field to prepare the wood for cutting. The trees are then felled, trimmed of their branches some more and cut into logs of a specific length and width. This way, they are all the same size and ready to be processed.

The logs are then loaded onto trucks and transported to The Navigator Company group’s industrial units where they have their paper mills. Once delivered, the logs have their bark stripped and are then put through the wood chipper where they are processed into wood chips, all of a consistent size and shape. The Navigator Company group’s biomass power stations power their industrial units. These power stations only produce electricity, and 100% of this electricity is fed into the national grid, contributing to the group’s ambition to produce their wood products at lower costs and with less environmental impact.

Once the wood is processed into standardised chips, they are ready to be prepared for further processing.

The next stage of the process is pulp manufacture, which we will be covering in a future blog, so stay tuned to continue the paper journey.