Thesis (M.B.A.)--Boston University. Note: missing page 90. / PLEASE NOTE: Boston University Libraries did not receive an Authorization To Manage form for this thesis or dissertation. It is therefore not openly accessible, though it may be available by request. If you are the author or principal advisor of this work and would like to request open access for it, please contact us at open-help@bu.edu. Thank you. / 2031-01-01

Thesis (M.S.)--Oregon State College, 1937. / Typescript. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 126-129). Also available on the World Wide Web.

The paper and pulp industry saw an increase in the number of mergers in 1980s and 1990s. There had been consolidation of a number of smaller companies into larger corporations, which have greater management, financial, and marketing power. This merging trend has resulted in a fewer number of firms and an increasing concentration in the industry. Although the number of firms has decreased, the total industry capacity has been increasing. The combination of these interesting factors has motivated the topic of this masters thesis. The primary purpose of this research is to explore the factors that positively influence a firms decision to vertically integrate into producing its own pulp.

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The aim of the thesis is to investigate local impacts of large investments. This problem has been approached from three directions and, therefore, the study consists of three themes, namely: the changing spatial patterns of corporate activities, the short-term local economic impacts of invest­ments, and the long-term socio-economic impacts of investments on the local municipality. In order to put the impact studies of investments into a broader context the first theme provides an analysis of the macro-orientated processes that change the spatial pattern of a forest- based industry. The empirical investigation is based on a case-study of a major Swedish forest company (SCA — Svenska Cellulosa Aktiebolaget), analysing its development from the 1950s to the present (Paper I). The locational changes of production plants, sales units and headquarters have been mapped and, parallel to this study of the company's spatial evolution, the underlying corporate strategies are discussed. The second theme focuses on the short-term local economic impacts of investments which are carried out at production units. The empirical data has been collected from a major investment introducing a new technology (Light Weight Coated paper - LWC) at Ortviken, an SCA-owned paper mill in Sundsvall. The point of departure for the analysis is the identification of contracted suppliers and their location in order to obtain a picture of the investment's diffusion in the local economy. As the choice of supplier is an important part of the study, criteria on how suppliers are chosen have also been examined (Paper II). Moreover, by using results from a number of similar investment studies, an attempt is made to summarize general experiences within a tentative model for estimating the share of local purchase deriving from major investments: the Local or Non-Local (LNL) model (Paper III). The third theme of the thesis pinpoints long-term local impacts of large investments. The investment generates impacts not only concurrently with the implementation phase, but also during the operation period of the invested item. The investigation of long-term socio-economic impacts has been performed by two studies employing different methodological approaches. The first study (Paper IV) deals with ex ante local impacts of locating a nuclear waste repository in Storuman or Mala, two sparsely populated municipalities in northern Sweden. The model is a traditional macro- formulated cohort model which is combined with a 'basic/non-basic' assumption regarding the intcrdependency within the local trade and business. The second study (Paper V) refers once again to the forest-based industry by emphasising the long-term socio-economic impacts of the investment examined in Paper II. This paper employs a micro-analytical modelling approach, so that, the municipal population is represented individually within the model. A microsimulation model is elaborated in order to analyse the long-term (15 years) local population and labour market dynamics induced by the LWC-investment. Some major findings of the thesis are: * The share of local purchase is connected to the composition of the investment. Analyses have shown that the higher the technological demand and the more technically advanced the goods and services related to the investment, the smaller is the local share of the purchase. *  It has proved possible to trace chain effects on different local labour-markets induced by changes in production at a particular place of work. Through linkages between the partial labour markets the closure of a major place of work will not only affect the occupational groups to which laid-off employees belong, but also give rise to changes in unemployment levels in many other occupations. / digitalisering@umu

Diss. (sammanfattning) Stockholm : Tekn. högsk., 2004. / Härtill 7 uppsatser. I häftet felaktigt ISBN: KTH/FTP/R--2004/37--SE.

Abstract The Finnish chemical forest industry has undergone a profound structural change over the past two decades. The basic industry is increasingly focusing its product development investments on its own products and operations while the development of processes and process machinery is left to specialised companies. At the same time the purchases of the pulp and paper industry are becoming larger: there is a shift from single device purchases to larger functional units. This research studies the Finnish process machinery industry serving the needs of the pulp and paper industry and its product development environment and strategies, and evaluates the ability of selected case companies to design integrated process solutions. Particularly the role of measurement and automation technology in these solutions is under closer scrutiny. Aspects of product life cycles and technology management, together with various procedures and operating models for innovation and product development processes, are discussed on the basis of the literature. The empirical part of the research was carried out as a case study with several Finnish companies manufacturing machinery and equipment for the chemical forest industry. The results show that the strategies of the studied industry are still very much dominated by the traditional emphasis on machinery design and construction. The change in the customers' purchasing behaviour towards ever larger units and functions is reflected particularly as increasingly large delivery projects. The units required by the customers are put together in the project phase, using parts and components developed in isolation from each other. There is very little evidence of actual product development, design or producing of integrated process solutions. In those cases where the design work has explicitly aimed at an integrated functional unit, the result has been a process that the customer can easily purchase and where the supplier's expertise in processes and process control is already included in the package. Designing integrated process solutions takes more than technical expertise and capability: the strategy, organisation, and product development process of the supplier company must support the integration of different technologies and expertise areas in the product. Instead of the traditional serial product development it is imperative that the questions of process design, process machinery, and process control are treated and solved simultaneously. The in-house expertise and networking of research and development must be promoted in such a way that the capabilities necessary to include the required technologies and expertise areas in a product project are already available when the product is being specified and designed.

Cellulose is one of the most abundant biopolymers on earth and is an important commodity for industries such as the pulp and paper industry. Cellulose is deposited into the plant cell walls by a complex of membrane bound enzymes known as cellulose synthases. A number of cellulose synthase (CesA) genes, which encode for different cellulose synthase proteins, have been identified from plant species such as Eucalyptus, Populus and Arabidopsis. Mutant and expression profile analysis of the CesA genes indicated that a set of three CesA genes are associated with secondary cell wall formation, while a different set of CesA genes are associated with primary cell wall formation. The aim of this study was to investigate the transcriptional regulation of the different members of the CesA gene family in Eucalyptus. The promoter regions were comparatively analysed with the orthologous regions in Arabidopsis and Populus using bioinformatics tools to identify putative regulatory motifs that playa role in CesA genes regulation. Six Eucalyptus CesA gene promoters were isolated using genome walking. The Eucalyptus promoter regions and the orthologous promoter regions from Populus and Arabidopsis were analysed using TSSP (Transcriptional start site plant promoter prediction) and NNPP (Neural network promoter prediction) software packages. The software packages predicted the transcriptional start sites of the genes and the core regulatory elements such as the TATA-box and initiator elements. The in silico results were compared among species and it was found that the predicted transcriptional start sites and the core elements of the CesA gene promoters showed substantial structural conservation. The promoter regions were used in a comparative in silico analysis with the orthologous promoter regions from Arabidopsis and Populus to identify putative regulatory motifs. This is the first study in which the promoters of the CesA gene family are characterized in Arabidopsis, Populus and Eucalyptus. Three software packages (Weeder, POCO and MotifSampler) were used to analyse the promoter regions and identify over-represented motif sequences. A number of key stem-specific and xylem-specific motifs such as the AC-motif and G-box motif were identified as well as a number of novel motifs. Although all of the predicted motifs identified here will have to be functionally tested, the results of this study provide a good map for directed deletion studies and functional testing of the CesA promoters. / Dissertation (MSc (Genetics))--University of Pretoria, 2009. / Genetics / unrestricted

Thesis (M.Sc. (Industrial Ecology and Environment))--Mahidol University, 2007. / LICL has E-Thesis 0022 ; please contact computer services.

The pulp and paper industry (PPI) is a business that produce large amounts of residues annually. Besides bark, large quantities of sludge are produced from the various parts of the industrial process. The sludge that comes from the biological wastewater purification process is denoted biosludge and is known as a particularly problematic waste product. It is of interest to reduce the amount of sludge from the PPI or to find new ways of handling the produced sludge. The common way to treat the PPI sludge is by incineration in the site’s bark boiler. The material is however difficult to dewater and often does more harm than good in the boilers. Different technologies to try and dewater the sludge further have been investigated previously, one that has recently been noted is hydrothermal treatment. The technology described in this thesis work is called hydrothermal carbonization (HTC) which uses water as a reaction media to turn the sludge into a coal-like material called hydrochar. The hydrochar has a higher heating value than the initial sludge and is more hydrophobic which makes it easier to dewater. This Master’s thesis describes the process technologies of the HTC process and presents some of the recent work done within the area. The properties of different residues from the PPI are presented before the integration of an HTC process on the biorefinery site in Domsjö, Sweden is discussed using previously published articles. A survey concerning sludge from industries within a 500 km range of the Domsjö biorefinery site is made to investigate whether residual streams similar to the ones at the Domsjö site are available in the vicinity. The results show that an HTC process demands energy in the form of steam and/or electricity. A previously made pinch and total site analysis show that the most accessible steam at the Domsjö biorefinery site, that most appliances and process steps uses, is at 7 bars. There are also steam levels of 20 and 32 bar in the area, which is within the range an HTC plant requires. The HTC process water demands further treatment which puts an extra stress on the already existing water purification process. The Domsjö biorefinery site produces 6000 tonnes of biosludge per year. Several HTC companies produce units that normally treat 20000-50000 tonnes of sludge per year, which indicates that additional sludge could be added to reach full capacity. The survey shows that there are similar materials available in the surroundings. It is concluded that further investigations concerning the sludge materials must be made before real implementation consequences can be calculated.