Mechanical Wood-Pulps Network
Small company helping to improve paper quality worldwide
Demonstrating that it has the expertise to compete with the very best
from around the world, a company in Hawkesbury, Ontario, leads in the
global paper market with an innovative technology that is helping paper
mills detect flaws earlier in the papermaking process.
First started in 1992, OpTest is a high-tech manufacturing company based
in optics and image analysis that has turned into a Canadian success story.
It regularly does business in 34 countries all around the world, with
customers ranging from pulp and paper mills to research and development
centres in pulp, paper, and allied industries. OpTest also has a close
affiliation with the Pulp and Paper Research Institute of Canada (Paprican),
and through it, the Mechanical Wood-Pulps Network, one of Canada's 20
federal Networks of
Centres of Excellence.
Roland Trepanier, OpTest's president, says the company's goal is to
develop and commercialize useful technology that paper mills can introduce
as early as possible in the papermaking process. If they can make changes
and adjustments early in the process, before it's too late, they can get
quality results more frequently. The benefits? Less wasted paper that
doesn't meet the standards specified in the buyer's original order. And
paper wouldn't have to be downgraded and shipped to another buyer at a
loss because of inferior quality.
The product that OpTest is best known for is the Fibre Quality Analyzer
(FQA), for which it shared the 1998 University-Industry Synergy Award
for R&D Partnership with Paprican and the University of British Columbia.
The FQA went to market in 1995-96 and has sold nearly 100 units since.
Trepanier says that an unexpected and important benefit of OpTest's relationship
with the NCE is that it has raised the company's profile within Canada,
helping it to find new opportunities to transfer technology from the lab
to industry.
Trepanier says the FQA is an important product for OpTest, allowing
it to break into new markets, and giving it access to export markets for
its other products. In fact, OpTest exports about 75 per cent of its products,
with half of that product going to the United States and half overseas.
It develops and markets its products around the world and sells to other
companies that deal in the paper industry and measure quality attributes.
And the company is expanding its product lines. January 2002 marked
the launch of the new and improved High Resolution FQA, which Trepanier
says measures greater sensitivity and resolution. OpTest's newest commercial
product is the Paper Perfect Formation Analyzer, which monitors the uniformity
of paper formation. Trepanier says that they are also working on a number
of in-house projects that are moving their technology from the lab to
the floor. This could end up benefiting the paper mills, allowing them
to
continuously make on-line or process measurements, and to potentially
save money.
"All the new things we've been working on have been trying to push
that barrier closer to the forest," concludes Trepanier.
|
