From megaplants to mini-mills - a trend in steelmaking - a prospect for papermaking

A comparison is made between the development trends experience over the last decades by the steel and papermaking industries, respectively. These two industrial branches, although totally different in their technical nature, are subject to similar pressures from their external environment, notably increasing requirements for environmental protection and more efficient raw material management. Such new dimensions of technical development may in fact require alternatives to the familiar search for efficiency through "economy of scale" that has prevailed virtually over the whole industrial era. It is suggested that some of the structural changes that already have taken place in the steel industry may serve as indicators for what might happen also in the paper industry. (C) 2003 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved