Why don the existing mills make kenaf pulp and paper?
A. Since the closure of nearly all small pulp mills and many small paper mills in the U.S. during the past 10-15 years our options for making pulp have become limited. The few remaining specialty mills produce very high priced pulps for high value uses, such as tea bags and cigarette papers. If they have room in their production schedule to pulp kenaf, we have to pay them a price comparable to the other pulps that they produce. This will make the kenaf paper prohibitively expensive. Additionally, the smaller specialty mills offer spotty production windows, and a reliable steady supply of processing can not be assured. Regarding the larger wood based pulp mills, there are two vexing issues. The first is the daily volume that they produce, and the second is the equipment configuration that exists. Generally, a U.S. wood pulp mill will produce in excess of 500 tons of pulp per day, using a kraft pulping process (sulfur based) and some form of chlorine bleaching. We have worked with a numb
