Wood Fibres for Papermaking

Abstract

Firs and pines dominated the global picture of the raw materials for paper industry until the 1950s. At that time, the interest in introducing new species, mostly hardwoods, led the researchers intensify efforts to look for the fibrous characteristics and their combinations that could represent the relationship between fibres, pulp and paper. The pulp and paper industry has shown, mainly in the last two decades, a strong North-South displacement. This is to a large extent due to the favourable climate, which promotes the development of the trees. Similarly, the paper fibres have gone from being almost exclusively softwoods from natural forests of the Northern-Hemisphere cold regions, such as spruce and fir, to fast-growing species of short fibres, such as eucalyptus, and willow and poplar hybrids from plantations...