UMaine “Paper Days” Symposium to Assemble Forest Products Industry Leaders
Contact: Faye Woodcock, 581-2297; George Manlove, 581-3756
ORONO — Some of the world’s foremost authorities on the paper and forest products industry will be at the University of Maine for “Paper Days 2006,” a two-day forest products symposium hosted by the UMaine Pulp & Paper Foundation.
The theme of this year’s April 5-6 Paper Days is “Meeting the Economic Challenges in the Global Community,” and will feature as conference keynote speaker Geoffrey Colvin, senior editor-at-large for FORTUNE magazine.
Through two days of panel discussions and several speakers, participants are expected to come away with new ideas to strengthen Maine’s challenged forest products industry and explore new industry initiatives, including the development of bio-refinery products from papermaking waste.
The Pulp & Paper Foundation’s annual Paper Days summit is the largest such conference in the state, with national significance, according to Peter Duncan, executive director of the Pulp & Paper Foundation.
“This kind of conference has the potential to revitalize the paper industry,” Duncan says. “We’ll get into tax issues, environmental issues, forestry practices, wood recycling and new ownership and how they’re all working together within the forest products industry. The bio-refinery research that is ongoing on this campus has the potential to go forward with some very positive initiatives with long-term effects.”
Panelists representing state and private policy-makers, regulators and stakeholders in the forest products industry, including construction companies, paper mills, consultants and labor management will share their views. Panelists and speakers include representatives from several of the nation and world’s largest paper manufacturers, with timberlands ranging from North America to South America and the Far East.
The symposium will consider how the forests and forest products industry in Maine can realize new efficiencies and lower energy costs, according to Duncan. Already, the UMaine Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering is researching ways to convert a byproduct of the paper-making process, hemicellulose, into ethanol fuel and even hemicellulose-based polymers for manufacturing.
“Stakeholders in the industry have priorities, but they don’t often come together to think about commonalities,” he says. “We want to try to bring them all together to see if we can work on issues that are important to the forest products industry and to the state of Maine. We are one of the most important industries in terms of jobs and the economy.”
Duncan says the symposium will seek out ways for the industry to overcome new challenges of global proportion.
“The challenges are really in terms of the cost of raw materials and of the equipment you use to make paper and the cost of energy, and what programs may or may not come into force to reduce the costs,” he says.
The Pulp and Paper Foundation was created 56 years ago to assist and prepare well-educated engineering students for careers in papermaking and the forest products industry. Its mission is to assure a steady stream of well-trained engineering graduates for the job market. With a privately funded endowment of more than $21 million, the foundation awarded 90 scholarships in 2005-2006. It is the largest such endowment in the nation, according to Duncan, and has financially helped more than 2,500 engineering students get engineering degrees and jobs.
Paper Days is scheduled around the Pulp & Paper Foundation’s annual meeting and brings in a slate of state and national speakers, presenters and panelists – all respected leaders and policymakers – to offer expert assessment and ideas about improving Maine’s forest products and paper industry.
Sponsors of “Paper Days 2006” include Northeast PIMA (Paper Industry Management Association), Maine Pulp & Paper Association, Maine Forest Products Council, the UMaine School of Forest Resources and Maine/New Hampshire TAPPI (Technical Association of the Pulp & Paper Industry), in addition to the Pulp & Paper Foundation.
For program information or to register, call the Foundation office at (207) 581-2297.