Non-wood fibers - A flexible non-wood pulp pilot plant is needed in Europe - IPZS has the answer

European pulp industry is beginning to question itself as to the utility to have a deeper insight in non-wood fibers. One practical proposal was advanced by Mr. Punya Chaudhuri (PPI - March '95): he suggested to reconvert a closed mill in Sweden in order to organize a supply of 100,000 ton/yr of non-wood pulps for paper mills to test them. The author strongly feels that at the moment such a project should instead concentrate on the complete exploitation of facilities already existing as those of IPZS in Italy: the definition and the planning of a large project should be the end product of an initial experimentation phase with more limited aims. This is a cheaper, safer and more practical approach, and therefore also more readily realizable as an international project. Moreover, it would be of capital importance to take into account some preliminary treatments like dry cleaning, biotreatment and hypercompaction. These insights can change the production of pulps from non-wood fibers.