May 8, 2026
Specialty paper manufacturer Papelera de Brandia, S.A. was facing declining market shares. They invested in a new headbox that has enabled them to improve and stabilize product quality as well as improve productivity. This has resulted in better competitiveness and increased market shares.
INVESTMENT TO INCREASE
MARKET SHARES
Located in Santiago de Compostela, Spain, Brandia is known for its high-quality white MG kraft paper, renowned for its high gloss, brightness, and excellent machinability. Most of the mill’s production goes to the food sector for flexible packaging, bags, form and fill packaging for high-speed automated packaging process, and many other applications in basis weight range from 24 to 165 g/m2.
Francisco Javier Vazquez Lopez, technical director, and Gaspar Barreras Rodriguez, general manager, Brandia.
There were two main reasons why Brandia started looking for improvements for its PM1, explains Gaspar Barreras Rodriguez, general manager, Brandia. First, the machine was not that old in years, but it was old in terms of technology and did not allow further improvements to be achieved in quality or productivity. Second, increasing machine speed and improving and stabilizing quality are difficult to achieve simultaneously. This was, however, something Brandia needed to achieve in order to improve its productivity to boost competitiveness and increase its market shares.
CAPACITY INCREASE AND MORE
Francisco Javier Vazquez Lopez, technical director, Brandia, explains further. “The production with PM1 is characterized by small batch orders that each have very specific needs in terms of grammage and quality. Some customer orders might be as small as (a few) kilos, which makes the daily production changes very challenging.”
Vazquez Lopez says that Brandia is committed to serving its customers, even with these highly specific orders. The new OptiFlo Fourdrinier headbox, supplied by Valmet, gives Brandia the needed flexibility for its production, making it possible to serve even these most demanding customer needs efficiently and profitably.
For small batch production, fast grade changes are the key to efficient and profitable production, Vazquez Lopez explains. The new headbox has enabled this, which helps Brandia to minimize both raw material and chemical consumption and costs, which contribute highly to the increased production capacity.
In addition, the machine line energy consumption has decreased by 15 percent. Barreras Rodriguez adds that Brandia has improved on average up to 25 percent on a majority of the key indicators they follow.
From left: José Tomás Dos Santos Diaz, mill sales manager, Valmet, with Brandia’s Vazquez Lopez and Juan Manuel Iglesias Perez, head of maintenance, in front of the new OptiFlo Fourdrinier headbox.
Compared to the old headbox, says Vazquez Lopez, “the operation of the new OptiFlo Fourdrinier headbox is significantly better. The production capacity increase has been what we expected, and even higher, and we expect the new headbox to enable even further capacity increases for our future needs.”
As proof, production has increased by 3,000 metric tons, which allows Brandia to expand its market share and serve new customers.
Adds Vasquez Lopez, “We are being asked very specific requirements and properties by our customers. We can now play with the properties where we had limitations before, or could not even produce. This gives us flexibility for production and much more possibilities to meet customer requirements.”
QUALITY TO MEET DEMANDING CUSTOMER REQUIREMENTS
One of the key targets for the headbox investment was to improve the quality of Brandia’s products and achieve a stable level of quality, says Vazquez Lopez: “With our old headbox we had very limited tools to work on the quality properties, but now with the new headbox we have tremendously more tools to optimize and improve both our production and quality.”
He explains that the most important quality properties their customers request are now possible to produce to the level that customers are asking for. “With the new headbox, Brandia has managed to improve formation, porosity, smoothness, and brightness. Furthermore, we now have the tools for optimizing these properties for each customer requirement and order,” says Vasquez Lopez.
A true testament of the excellent and stable quality is the very low amount of customer complaints. Barreras Rodriguez proudly states that claims originating from the headbox have practically disappeared since the installation of the new headbox.
EASY MAINTENANCE
When asked about the maintenance of the new OptiFlo Fourdrinier headbox, Juan Manuel Iglesias Perez, head of maintenance for Brandia, replies, “There have been no issues or problems with the headbox, and no unexpected or out-of-the-ordinary maintenance work has been needed. Normal maintenance and cleaning have been easy.”
When it comes to changing the lamellas, Iglesias Perez says that the Valmet team recommended using carbon fiber lamellas instead of polycarbonate lamellas. The advantage with the carbon fiber lamellas is that they have a very long lifetime—from three to five years—and this has been the experience of Brandia as well. Since the start-up in August 2022, the lamellas have been working flawlessly.
TRUST AND PERFORMANCE
For Brandia it was vitally important to select a technology partner that could adapt to their specific needs as a smaller company. In practice, this meant three things: transparent communication, trust between the partners, and technology that could efficiently adjust to the mill’s small batch production, Barreras Rodriguez explains.
“We manufacture a very wide basis weight range of products for various food packaging applications. The production batches are very small and there are up to seven grade changes a day; the technology needed to efficiently support small batch production to ensure high productivity. This is exactly what Valmet did with us,” he states.
Vazquez Lopez says the mill had an idea of the development and improvement they needed; the right solution was found when both parties contributed ideas and knowledge to reach a solution that would allow Brandia to meet its targets for the investment. “Brandia has a long, fruitful history with Valmet and the relationship has always been very good,” he says. “This partnership and trust, especially with the local Valmet personnel, was one of the factors that encouraged us to go forward in this project with Valmet.”
Brandia can now serve its customers better than before. Pairing improved customer satisfaction with production capacity increase, both Vazquez Lopez and Barreras Rodriquez agree that the project targets have been fulfilled and even exceeded. “The benefits Brandia currently gets from the new headbox, and the upgraded PM1, are superior to what we expected,” Barreras Rodriquez concludes.
Elsa Sinjaga is marketing manager, Paper Business Line, for Valmet. Learn about Valmet headboxes and more at valmet.com.