'Filling' the Needs of Today's Papermakers

摘要

As with most chemical and raw material suppliers to the paper industry,the minerals sector has generally stabilized in recent years following dramatic changes throughout the 1990s.The industry's conversion to alkaline papermaking that began in the 1980s carried into the new century,with most woodfree fine paper mills having converted by 2000.Today,some groundwood-containing printing and writing papers machines continue moving toward neutral/alkaline,opening up yet new market channels for carbonates,mainly at the expense of kaolin clays,which lost significant market share to ground and precipitated carbonates in both the coated and uncoated free sheet arenas during the past two decades.