The construction and management contract won by Veolia Water Germany with MD Papier GmbH & Co. KG at the beginning of 2004 has now moved into the operational phase. The outsourcing of purification and wastewater treatment facilities is an attractive alternative for the pulp and paper industries.
The contract, signed for an initial period of 12 years, is managed by Oewa, a subsidiary owned 100% by Veolia Water in Germany. It involves the extension and modernisation of effluent treatment facilities at the Plattling site in (Lower) Bavaria, where construction work has now been completed, together with management of the process water production and wastewater cleaning units at the site.
MD Papier is part of the Myllykoski Group, which employs 4,000 staff throughout the world, produces 2.5 million metric tons of paper each year and generates revenue of 1.45 billion euros. The MD Papier facilities in Germany are leaders in wood-containing coated printing paper, in particular for Offset printing.
At the Plattling site, two large paper machines produce up to 350,000 metric tons of paper each year. The factory specialises in ultra-light printing papers, which are used for magazines like Der Spiegel and Focus, and for the catalogues of mail-order companies, highly popular in Germany.
Water plays a vital role in paper production, as huge quantities are required.The resulting effluent has a higher pollutant and organic residue content than urban wastewater. At Plattling, 4.7 million cubic metres per year are needed to produce paper, and this generates a little over 4 million cubic metres of effluent per year. The production of ultra-white paper varieties is scheduled to increase, meaning that the resulting amount of pollutants is set to rise as well.
To cope with this increased load, Veolia Water has set up a high-performance two-phase aerobic biological system in the wastewater treatment plant, together with a new cooling system, and the plant's entire automation system has been modernised from top to bottom.
The wastewater treatment plant has a BOD load capacity of around 120,000 Eh.