Europe’s Paper Mills Send 7,000 Tonnes of Waste to Landfill — Now UPM Has a Fix
Heiner Schütte, Senior Sourcing Manager at UPM, told Andritz that the collaboration represented a step-change in how the company manages its waste streams.
SEATTLE (Scrap Monster): Finnish material solutions company UPM has partnered with technology group Andritz and German recycling specialist HolyPoly to recycle used paper machine clothing from its European mills — diverting thousands of tonnes of synthetic polymer waste away from incineration and into the production of injection-moulded parts for the automotive and furniture industries.
It comes as an estimated 7,000 tonnes of paper machine clothing is discarded from paper machines across Europe each year, with most of it currently burned or sent to landfill. The program, which launched at industrial scale in January 2025, collects end-of-life fabrics and felts made from polyamide (PA) and polyethylene terephthalate (PET) at several UPM mills in Finland and Germany, with HolyPoly coordinating the collection and ensuring the material is recycled in full compliance with European regulations.
Each tonne of recycled paper machine clothing prevents roughly three tonnes of CO₂ emissions that would otherwise result from incineration, and the recycled material is already substituting virgin polymers in new components, with demand described as high and the process fully scalable.
Heiner Schütte, Senior Sourcing Manager at UPM, told Andritz that the collaboration represented a step-change in how the company manages its waste streams. “We at UPM are delighted to collaborate with Andritz and HolyPoly to recycle our used paper machine clothing,” Schütte said. “With this initiative, we are moving the utilisation of used paper machine clothing higher up the waste hierarchy, from energy recovery to material recycling.”
In parallel, Andritz is working to optimise the quality and specifications of the recycled granulate, with the long-term goal of feeding the material back into the manufacture of new paper machine clothing — a move that would close the loop entirely. The initiative also forms part of Andritz’s broader push to meet the EU’s planned extended producer responsibility (EPR) requirements.
Courtesy: www.woodcentral.com.au