Suzano began producing Eucafluff, the world’s first eucalyptus-based fluff pulp, in late 2015 in Brazil. The material, designed for use in absorbent products like diapers and sanitary pads features enhanced softness, superior absorption and high compression. Last year, the company announced a massive capacity expansion, increasing production of Eucaluff 400% to 440,000 tons per year.

Guilherme Melhado, global director of Fluff and Fiber Solutions at Suzano, discusses the fiber’s ever-growing role in the global hygiene market.

Nonwovens Industry: As Suzano Eucafluff marks the end of its first decade in the market, what are the major factors that have driven its adoption by manufacturers?

Guilherme Melhado: We always believed that Eucafluff® could be a game-changer in the hygiene market.  When we began the R&D process to create the world’s first eucalyptus fluff, we heard a lot of skepticism about the potential for a short-fiber alternative to the long-fiber pine pulp that had always dominated the industry. Ten years on, many of those doubters are now our customers, and we continue to make progress on overcoming some of the technical barriers holding back greater adoption.

Eucafluff® has proven benefits on sustainability and efficiency that really resonate with manufacturers. Thanks to its high compression capability, it requires less packaging, reduced plastic film use and more efficient transport and storage. It is also well-known that fast-growing farmed eucalyptus outperforms pine across a range of lifecycle impacts, which is a critical factor for manufacturers to help deliver on their own sustainability commitments. And Eucafluff® is now certified by both the FSC and PEFC Cerflor, as well as being approved as an authorized raw material for products bearing the EU Ecolabel.

NWI: Which hygiene product categories are integrating Suzano’s fluff pulp? How is it expanding its reach into new markets and new geographies?

GM: Eucafluff® is now commonly found in products like baby and adult diapers, sanitary pads, pet pads, and hospital supplies like undermats. The demand for these product categories continues to grow, fuelled by an expanding middle class in emerging markets – particularly in Latin America, Asia, the Middle East and Africa – and an aging global population. In response, at Suzano we have significantly increased production capacity to meet this rising demand.

Our recent R$490 million investment at our Limeira unit in São Paulo, Brazil quadruples our total fluff pulp production capacity to 440,000 tonnes per year, helping us keep serving our existing markets while also reaching new regions where demand is increasing.

NWI: How does Eucafluff perform in absorbent products when compared with fluff made from traditional long-fiber pine pulp?

GM: Eucafluff®offers a number of benefits, particularly around performance and consumer comfort. The material is softer, more flexible, and thinner than fluff made from pine pulp, which translates into more discreet and comfortable products – critical qualities for products like adult diapers and sanitary pads.

It provides superior liquid retention and rewet capabilities, ensuring longer-lasting dryness and comfort in products like baby diapers, contributing to overall well-being and peace of mind for consumers.

We have also found that Eucafluff® offers superior performance in odor control when compared to softwood-based fluff, which is thanks to the particular characteristics of Suzano’s eucalyptus.

NWI: What are the biggest challenges when integrating short fiber eucalyptus into existing production processes and how has Suzano addressed these challenges?

GM: Despite the clear benefits from transitioning to Eucafluff,® we had to learn a lot of practical lessons about the integration process. When we started our R&D process more than a decade ago, it became clear that the major hurdle to rapid adoption of short-fiber alternatives in the hygiene industry was industrial processes. Our customers’ equipment was designed exclusively for the long fiber inputs that had long dominated the industry, so we needed to find a way to overcome these technical barriers to make the promises of fiber substitution a reality.

Through close collaboration with machinery manufacturers and technical experts, we have helped facilitate this transition, finding ways to adapt equipment to perform effectively using eucalyptus fluff on its own, or in a blend with pine. Today, the latest models of industrial machinery for the hygiene industry are designed to fully accommodate short fibers, and engineers are now adept at retrofitting older models.

To support the process, we have additionally invested into building our own dedicated team of application engineering experts to overcome barriers to adoption. Thanks to this, we now have  helped technical teams gain considerable practical experience for advising our customers on how best to alter production recipes and methods to integrate Eucafluff® into products. As a result, many of the hurdles we faced in the early days, that once slowed adoption, are now well behind us.

NWI: How do you see the role of hardwood fluff evolving in the hygiene market over the coming decade, and how is Suzano helping to meet the growing global demand?

GM: As we saw in past decades in the paper sector, where hardwoods have continued to gain marketshare over softwood pulp, we’re expecting to see a similar shift where eucalyptus helps meet growing demand and starts to displace the use of pine in the hygiene market. Production volumes are continuing to expand across a number of hygiene product categories, such as the sharp rise in demand we’re seeing for adult incontinence products needed by an aging global population.

This is why we have been scaling up our production in line with the customer demand we’ve been seeing, quadrupling the capacity at our Limeira mill. This is already up and running and we have seen our competitors also investing into eucalyptus fluff. This is a clear market signal that the trend of shift to hardwood substitution is already well underway internationally.

https://www.suzano.com.br/en/products-and-brands/raw-material/pulp-fluff