Port Hawkesbury Paper (PHP), based in Nova Scotia, Canada, has taken paper production to a higher level thanks to its Elevation Book paper. “The book market is forecasted for modest growth, and our machine capabilities align with the requirements to make a high-quality book paper,” Mike Hartery, Mill Co-Manager at PHP says. “We were looking for opportunities and paper grades to fully utilize our world-class facility.”
Elevation Book offers printers, publishers, and ultimately the reader optimal opacity, ensuring high readability and minimal show-through. It achieves an 80 brightness, which enhances the contrast between paper and print and enhances the brilliance of printed materials. It offers less reversion than similar papers, meaning it doesn’t yellow as quickly if exposed to light.
The high-quality paper achieves all of this due to state-of-the-art pulping and machine technology that allows for a higher fiber quality and an enhanced fiber/clay matrix. That higher clay content makes for a better paper, that in turn makes for outstanding print resolution and vivid color reproduction.
"Our paper meets or exceeds the quality demands required by publishers and can be used for educational texts and workbooks, novels, trade and industry books, children’s books, and religious texts,” Mr. Hartery says. “And our paper machine is the widest and fastest publication paper machine in North America, designed to enhance the top and bottom sides of the sheet for best-in-class quality.”
Port Hawkesbury brings more than great paper production to the book table. It also brings dedication to sustainability for the long term. Its Woodlands Unit promotes sustainable forestry practices, with its paper products using fiber from those managed forests. Nearly 68% of the company’s fiber is certified under one of three internationally recognized certification programs: FSC®, SFI®, and PEFC. The company also does not use chemical pulp in the manufacturing process, instead using mechanical pulp that produces two times the yield, “resulting in more efficient use of forest resources and significantly fewer trees harvested for each ton of our paper,” Bevan Lock, Mill Co-Manager says.
The Woodlands Unit monitors and reports on sustainable forest management indicators annually, as well as having a 100- year plan in place. The goal is to “maintain healthy productive forests and drive continual improvement of our forest management systems,” Mr. Lock says.
The company is also tackling climate change, the most notable of its CO2 emissions reduction projects being PHP Wind’s Goose Harbour Lake Wind Farm. It is currently under construction and will be ready for full production of clean, green electricity in late 2026. With its $450,000,000 investment, PHPWind “will help improve the book publishing complex in the future with sustainable, quality supply,” Mr. Lock says.
While PHP is well known for its paper, which is used in publications of all kinds, it is also looking at new market opportunities based on its machine capabilities. Foodwrap grades and an uncoated freesheet substitute are in the development stage, even as the company continues its wind farm and forest management goals.
Port Hawkesbury’s Elevation Book is a key component of its high-quality portfolio, “setting the bar higher for uncoated mechanical book grades by introducing a sheet that lies between uncoated mechanical book grades and uncoated freesheet,” Mr. Hartery says. For publishers, that means high-quality books.
For readers, it means a top-of-the-line experience. “We have a responsibility to continue our success,” Mr. Hartery states, “as our customers deserve our very best effort and have come to expect it.”
