Pulp Industry standards require the precise determination of the actual percent moisture (air-dry) content for every shipment. Measuring bales of paper pulp for moisture content is important because it allows sellers and buyers of paper pulp to make transactions on the basis of Air-Dry percentage pulp. Conventional manual testing methods (TAPPI 210) to determine actual percent moisture content requires a manual sampling with frequencies of at least one small sample cut of 2 or 3 inches (51 or 76 mm) from each 2000 lb (907 kg) bale of "Wet-Pulp" and from every fifth (5th) bale or roll of "Dry-Pulp". This results in taking numerous 20-50 gram samples for testing. To comply with the Pulp industry standards for Air-Dry testing, a moderate size pulp mill needs to assign several full-time employees to bale sampling. The mill also would need various drying ovens to facilitate this conventional method of testing. For larger mills, manual testing is even more difficult and almost impossible to accomplish.

Forté Industry Solution
Many Pulp mills around the world have found that conventional testing for % moisture in bales is costly, not practical and inaccurate and have concluded that testing had to be done automatically and reliably. By installing Forté Moisture Measurement Systems they have accomplished their goals.

Forté Systems accurately measure and test each and every bale, or roll produced automatically without manual sampling. With a Forté System, pulp mills know exact moisture content before they ship product or invoice customers - and that way they avoid the problems associated with manual sampling. Forté systems provide all the moisture and invoicing data instantly, including profile across the dryer, sheet counting, basis weight and drop control.

The data captured by Forté Systems provide pulp inventory systems with records of the exact % Air-Dry Content and weight for every bale, unit and lot of pulp produced. The Forté solution reduces labor cost and provides complete and accurate records over conventional methods for measuring % Air-Dry.

Only Forté provides 100% sampling and direct means to improve yield by 1/2% or more. Even a 100 tons per day mill can realize a return of $1,000 per day or more. Return on investment for a Forté system occurs in months rather than in years.