the dewatering from the conventional Yankee dryer suction pressure roll with its hard-to-maintain nip pressure profile, and moves it to a shoe press where the nip is easy to maintain. The nip of the Yankee transfer roll is easy, as well. That’s good for us since we want to make many grades of tissue and towel on this machine. The other driving factors in our decision were the lower drying energy costs and the ability to make a better sheet with less fibre,” he says. To confirm the ability to make conventional and premium grades with von Drehle’s deinked furnish, several trials were held on Valmet’s pilot machine in Karlstad, Sweden using wet lap pulp from the Natchez recycling plant. The tensile strength achieved from the deinked pulp was a highlight of the trials. Panktratz recounts, “We achieved significantly more tensile – and that is a real plus – rather than adding more weight to achieve tensile [on towel grades]. That got us real excited about the potential!” For extra 2013. That machine runs in both modes and produces premium quality tissue and towel grades. TWO-PHASE PLAN Since the startup, the Natchez machine has been running flat out, producing the same quality “bread and butter” grades as delivered from the Cordova, NC mill, using Advantage DCT100 machines. The current maximum speed is 6200 fpm (1890 m/min) running lightweight bath tissue; they have set daily production records of 95 tons on light tissue and 148 tons on toweling. Gary James, Production Manager, confirms that the quality is top-notch: “Customers like the products… they are very satisfied with its cleanliness and softness. It’s a beautiful sheet,” he says. They have been running the plain belt for the past year and a half, since the machine is fully booked with their “Customers like the products… they are very satisfied with its cleanliness and softness. It’s a beautiful sheet” WORLD PULP&PAPER 71 Figure 3. Tissue mill startup crew. Figure 4. Von Drehle wet end. confidence, von Drehle staff got a positive reference when they visited the Papel San Francisco mill in Mexicali, Mexico, which had been operating an Advantage NTT machine since July,