Irving Pulp and Paper is part of J. D. Irving and a leading market pulp producer located in Saint John, New Brunswick, Canada. A significant portion of its product is Maple kraft pulp, which is sent to Irving Tissue, which produces premium tissue products for its customers throughout North America. The softness of tissue paper is critical property can be affected by the fiber hornification during pressing and drying processes.

Irving Paper Ltd. is one of the leading manufacturers in the world in making value-added specialty paper (SC) from mechanical pulp which is conventionally used for newsprint. SC paper requires not only more refining (energy) in fibre preparation but also higher brightness of the produced pulp, which adds more to the pulp production costs. Dr. U's group at the University of New Brunswick has been collaborating with Irving on improving refining energy efficiency through applying biotechnologies (enzymes) in the mechanical refining process.

Irving Paper is a specialty paper producer located in Saint John, New Brunswick. The mill has made significant investment most recently. There are three TMP lines that produce high quality TMP to be used by two super- calendered (SC) paper machines. The TMP quality, including the fiber characteristics, would be critical in producing high- quality SC paper. The project is part of Irving Paper’s goal to optimize the overall production process, including the decrease in the production cost.

In an Eastern Canadian paper mill, there are often pitch and wood-related deposits on the processing equipment, in particular, the supercalender rolls. Such problems not only have negative impacts on the product qualities but also on the economical performance due to the increased downtime to clean-up the rolls. It is, therefore, important to minimize or even eliminate deposits in the production process in order to improve the efficiency of operation.