Kruger invests in Montréal mill

Kruger Inc. has announced an investment of more than CA$30 million ($22.5 million) in the Place Turcot Containerboard Mill in its home city of Montréal. That mill is part of the Kruger Packaging business unit of the company.

With the investment scheduled to be completed in 2025, Kruger says the Place Turcot facility will be the first in North America to manufacture 100-percent-recycled saturating kraft board, which is used to make high-pressure laminates for furniture, countertops and decorative paneling.

“With this transformation project, our aim is to secure the future of our Place Turcot Mill and to consolidate its position as a key player in the circular economy,” Kruger Vice President Maxime Cossette says. “This project will give us more flexibility to meet the ever-changing needs of the market and enable us to keep making better products with a smaller environmental footprint.” 

The investment was announced during a February news conference attended by several Canadian and Québec elected and appointed officials, including Jonathan Wilkinson, Canada’s minister of natural resources, and Maïté Blanchette Vézina, Québec minister of natural resources and forests.

One aspect of the Place Turcot mill investment will be the implementation of what Kruger calls state-of-the-art machine learning and artificial intelligence (AI) technology. “The implementation of AI technology at the mill is to optimize production and automation and to reduce waste,” François Richard of Kruger tells Recycling Today. However, the automation is not being deployed to inspect or sort scrap feedstock, Richard says.

Additionally, “One of the main goals of the modernization of our mill is to diversify the portfolio of products that are manufactured there,” Richard says, adding the saturating kraft board to be produced after the investment is an additional grade to be made at the mill, not a replacement for any existing grades.

In addition to the saturating kraft board, Place Turcot will continue to make recycled-content gypsum board paper, customized board for residential construction, folding boxboard for Food and Drug Administration-compliant food packaging and white top linerboard.

Kruger calls the Place Turcot mill the only consumer of old corrugated containers (OCC) in the greater Montréal area and says the investment will allow it to “consolidate its role as a crucial player in the circular economy” of the region.

The mill consumes the equivalent of all OCC generated in the region and is located next to Kruger Recycling’s Sorting and Recovery Centre near downtown Montréal, the firm says. The Place Turcot Mill has been making 100-percent-recycled linerboard for more than 60 years.

On the greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions front, the mill also is expected by Kruger to reduce its GHG emissions by more than 2,200 metric tons per year once the announced investment project is completed.

“It is always gratifying to see a company like Kruger Packaging striving to improve its competitiveness by making strategic choices that are based on market analysis and the determination to offer wood-derived products that are always more eco-friendly," Vézina says.

Kruger is a North American pioneer manufacturer of 100-percent-recycled-content containerboard, having started production in 1961. Kruger Packaging says it has more than 1,000 employees at five manufacturing facilities, including three in Québec, one in Ontario and at its recently commissioned Elizabethtown Packaging Plant in Kentucky.