Paper industry sustainability in South Africa drives Net Zero, biomass energy and water savings
By Larry Claasen
THE Paper Manufacturers Association of South Africa (PAMSA) says its members are committed to being net zero by 2050. The sector, which employs 150,000 people and contributes R60 billion a year to GDP, has seen members like Mpact, Mondi and Sappi introduce a range of ambitious water and energy reduction programmes that will enable them to reach their target.
Mpact, for example, has installed 1,7MW of solar PV across 14 sites, with more in the pipeline — already supplying over 5% of the company’s total electricity consumption.
For its part, Sappi’s water abstraction — the process of removing or diverting water from natural sources like rivers, lakes, streams, or underground aquifers — at its Tugela Mill dropped by about 30% through process modifications, water reuse, and closed-loop systems.
On the whole, pulp and paper mills are also increasingly generating their own power through co-generation using biomass — a carbon-neutral fuel — with several mills producing more than half their energy needs from biomass sources. Sappi’s Ngodwana Energy plant burns up to 35 tons of biomass per hour to generate electricity fed directly into the national grid, for instance.
Mpact achieved a 9,5% reduction in energy use and an 11,43% drop in CO²e emissions per saleable ton in 2023 against its 2019 baseline, and Mondi improved energy efficiency by 7% over four years.
PAMSA member operations are required to develop five-year energy management plans tied to carbon budgets and a long-term Net Zero journey.
Mills also recycle water up to ten times within a single production cycle. Efficiency gains have been so aggressive that some operations are now seeing impacts on paper quality — a sign the industry is hitting the ceiling of conventional water-saving methods.
PAMSA executive director Jane Molony said the industry is also using lignin, a class of complex organic polymers derived from black liquor, which itself is a byproduct of the chemical pulping process, to generate electricity.
It does this by blasting the lignin into a recovery boiler, which generates steam and drives a turbine. The use of lignin in generating electricity is more environmentally friendly, as it is 40% more carbon efficient than using coal.
Aside from being used to generate electricity, lignin is also being used as dust suppressant, agricultural products and as a drilling lubricant.
Molony pointed out that the use of pulp is becoming more widespread and can be found in a growing range of consumer products. “You can end up eating pulp in yoghurt. And in lipstick, there’s a cellulose-based product in there.”
When asked if tree-based products can be compared to crude-oil-derived products, Molony pointed out that unlike tree based products, those derived from oil are not renewable.
“We grow it. We plant it. That’s what’s so exciting about it.”
Molony said the local paper and pulp industry supports the Vienna Call for Action, an accord adopted at the Global Summit on Advancing Sustainable Forest-based Bioeconomy Approaches earlier this year.
The country took a leading role with the accord, as it was co-chaired by the governments of Austria and South Africa. The initiative provided a blueprint under the United Nations (UN) umbrella to shift global markets away from fossil fuels and toward a sustainable, wood-based circular bioeconomy.
For its part, PAMSA sits on the Advisory Committee for Sustainable Forest Industries, which is part of the UN. “It’s the only private sector committee that actually gives input into these sorts of policies,” Molony said.
