Nonwood raw materials are very bulky, is transportation a problem?
Nonwood raw materials are annually collected from same areas, and thus nonwood mills are smaller than wood pulp mills. Therefore process technology must be more simple and economical than in large wood pulp mills. Most of the nonwood materials are available as harvested on fields, so practically they are more easily available than wood. Typically, the moisture content of nonwood materials is 10-15 %. In addition, these materials do not have bark. For example, baled reed can have a density of 180-200 kg/m3. Therefore, transported fibre dry matter (tons) per truck is comparable to wood as cargo weight limits only wood transportation. In general, nonwood raw material transportation distances may be even higher that 200 km. It is also worth mentioning that there are many nonwood raw materials, which are already at mill gate like bagasse and oil palm residues.
