LOCATION FACTORS OF PAPER AND PULP INDUSTRY
- Pulp making is raw material oriented: For this reason, Sweden makes pulp only because of small market for paper.
- Paper making is market oriented: England has only paper market because of lack of raw materials.
- Wood: Pulp industry should be located as close as possible to the raw material (Heavy logs). Riverside site is ideal. Rigorous surveying of nearby forests is necessary so that the location remains profitable for long time.
- Water: To make a ton of pulp, 100 tons fresh water is required. Thus, suitable sites for paper and pulp industry should be ideally close to rivers or other water bodies.
- Power: Vast power supplies are essential for paper production. Thus, locations should be rich in coal, wood, hydrothermal electricity.
- Transport: Although the transportation cost is minimized by locating it near to the raw material, newsprint and pulp is still heavy. For this reason, the mills are located near the coast where logs arrive floating on rivers and pulp and paper produced is loaded on the ship to be transported.
- Labor: Highly mechanized and require little manpower
- Capital: Highly capital intensive because of large mechanized and specialized. Larger the plant, larger is the economies scale and hence larger is the initial start-up costs.
- Market: Pulp and paper combined industries usually produce low quality newsstands. High quality paper making plants are usually market oriented and small, they import pulp.
- Best suited locations are thinly populated, forested areas with low amount of industrialization.
