Schwedt UPM factory

The city of Schwedt is a paper city, here the newspapers of Berlin are recycled and turned into paper again. The city has one of the most modern plants in Europe, very little manpower is used and the amount of paper brought to Schwedt every day is about 3 500 tons.

Compared to old methods this technological plant produces, recycles paper at a high speed and preserves nature by reusing old waste paper.

Schwedt is one of the few cities where people have moved to live and is has a very good economic situation.

On the film we can see how the plant works and what dimensions the plant has. The company is the biggest paper producer in Europe.

Some details:

60 to 70 trucks come to Schwedt from Berlin on a daily basis bringing old paper for recycling. This paper is collected in special blue containers, unfortunately people also throw other material into these containers, such as CD's, Videos, plastic etc. Were there to be only paper the production could happen much faster.

The main factory hall has the PM 11 machine which is 120 meters long. The pulp is mixed with water and put on a 8,50 meter wide lane or path. This mass rushes through the engine at a speed of 100 kilometres. Due to the speed, water is sucked out of the mass and in minutes this becomes paper.

The paper rolls are 100 kilometres long and weigh 40 tons. This unique technique is that if a roll is full, the engine automatically jumps to form the next roll. Naturally, these rolls cannot be used with this weight, the rolls are cut down to size. Soon afterwards the paper is delivered to it's customers in Berlin.

All in all 280,000 tons of paper are produced every year.