Early eucalypt pulping research and development

* Also known as sulphate pulping because of its use of sodium sulphate as make-up chemical.

In Australia early moves towards eucalypt pulping were taken by State governments anxious to exploit their natural resources. Tasmania engaged an expert from USA in 1914 to report on the pulping suitability of local woods and in 1917 Victoria sent samples to Norway for evaluation. Discouraging reports were received by both. More fruitful, however, was the approach taken in Western Australia, where Lane Poole, the Conservator of Forests, after learning in 1917 from a French visitor of the encouraging results being obtained from young plantation eucalypts in the Mediterranean area, convinced I. H. Boas, Lecturer in Chemistry at the Perth Technical School, to investigate the pulping potential of young karri. Lane Poole saw a possible pulping project as a way of economically justifying the cost of the regeneration thinning he believed to be necessary to restore high productivity to the heavily exploited karri and jarrah forests. Together with L. R. Benjamin, Boas was soon able to demonstrate in the laboratory that a reasonable soda pulp could by made from young karri if appropriate conditions were used.

In 1919 Boas and Benjamin joined the newly-established Institute of Science and Industry and set up Australia's first forest products laboratory in Perth. With financial help from the other States they extended the pulping investigations to a wider range of eucalypt species and to sulphite as well as soda pulping and installed a pilot scale soda pulping plant in the paper mill at Fyansford, Vic. where commercial trials were successfully carried out in 1921. In the same year a similar trial was made at the Botany, NSW paper mill using soda pulp from a pilot plant set up at the State Timber Yard in Sydney following encouraging reports from USA on eucalypt woods sent there by the NSW Government for pulping evaluation.

Commercial interest was stimulated by the work of Boas and Benjamin and in 1925 Amalgamated Zinc (De Bavay's) Ltd. and an associated industrialist, Gerald Mussen, arranged for wood from north-west Tasmania to be tested in Holland for the manufacture of newsprint containing a high percentage of eucalypt sulphite pulp. A product was made under commercial conditions but its quality was unsuitable and its cost high. Nevertheless Amalgamated Zinc was sufficiently confident of ultimate success to establish a subsidiary company, Tasmanian Paper Pty. Ltd., to carry out a pilot plant study to develop a viable project. Benjamin left CSIR's Pulp and Paper Section (as it was then called) to become Technical Superintendent of the plant, which began operation at Kermandie, Tas. in 1928 with facilities for sulphite and ground-wood pulping as well as a small paper machine. It operated until 1930, during which time it was established -and confirmed by a trial at APM's Fairfield mill -that newsprint could be produced from mixtures of eucalypt groundwood and sulphite pulp. The latter was made from young swamp gum (E. regnans) of which there was only limited availability. Commercial production would therefore have also required the use of mature wood, which was much more difficult to process by sulphite pulping. Amalgamated Zinc nevertheless decided to form an operating company and was on the point of floating this when the New York Stock Exchange crash occurred and the project was deferred.

Australian Academy of Technological Sciences and Engineering