How the first Bagley & Sewall paper machine came to Norway

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The Holmen-Hellefos Paper Company (now the Borregaard-Hellefos Mill) was established in May 26, 1898 as the result of a merger between the Holmen Mill at Drammen in Southeastern Norway, founded 1883, and the Hellefos groundwood mill located near Hokksund, some 20 km upriver, founded 1889. Immediately after the merger, the company started planning to improve production facilities for both ground-wood and paper. Planning and re-planning dragged on at great length. In late 1904 or early 1905 Holmen-Hellefos decided to purchase a paper machine from the Bagley & Sewall Company. This brought an end to a rather stormy chapter in their history and at the same time marked the coming of a new era.

Like most stories, it was neither simple nor fast moving. Here is the story of the "stormy chapter" and how it was resolved to bring in a new era for the Borregaard-Hellefos Mill

THE MACHINE THAT NEVER WAS!

Originally, there were two alternatives considered for improvement of the company's paper making. First was to rebuild the existing mill at Drammen. Second was of an entirely new mill at Hellefos. Although no final decision was made, it is known that plans were pushed quite far.

At least two paper-machine suppliers were considered to furnish a new machine at Holmen-Hellefos, one from Europe and one from the United States. The U. S. entry was a machine from Pusey & Jones Company of Wilmington, Delaware. The European entry was for a machine from Maschinenbauanstalt H. Füllner of Warmbrunn, Schlesien (today Beloit Poland).

Drawings dated October 14th, 1898 show a Pusey & Jones paper machine intended for Holmen-Hellefos. The drawings still exist today and are kept at the Manuscripts Department of Hagley Museum & Library in Wilmington, Delaware. The drawings are old and specifications and figures are small and easily misread. It appears the fourdrinier was 104" wide by 31' - 113/4" long. There were two plain presses, a dryer section consisting of five 48" diameter dryers followed by a 108" diameter Yankee dryer and four additional 48" diameter dryers. The dry end was to include a calender followed by a slitter arrangement of some kind and a two drum upright reel. The overall machine length was 104' - 6". This paper machine was never built, at least for Holmen-Hellefos.

Historian Bent Ek in his great centennial book revealed that a paper-machine actually was ordered from Füllner, but the order was canceled shortly after. It is further revealed that work on the machine was well under way at the time of order cancellation. It turned out that Holmen-Hellefos had to pay Füllner for losses. Specifications of the Füllner machine are not known. A year later the bottom fell out of the paper market. The paper mill, with its small and outdated machinery, could no longer be run at a profit, and consequently production was shut down in the summer 1899. The machinery was eventually sold.

Around 1902, plans were made to restart the Holmen mill with production of brown-wrap. Drammenselvens Papirfabrikker, a paper mill some 35 km upriver from Drammen (today Union Geithus), had enjoyed great success with such production for nearly 25 years. Further research indicated that the brown wrap market was on the decline. It was realized that the company's future would be in production of newsprint. In 1897 Drammenselvens Papirfabriker had installed a high-speed machine from Pusey & Jones. Although not entirely a success from the beginning, the machine was a leader in the Norwegian paper industry.

THE "STORMY CHAPTER" CONTINUES

It is known for a fact that negotiations with The Pusey & Jones Company were again taken up in 1903 or early 1904 and, according to Mr. Ek's book, were close to the end when an offer came in from the Bagley & Sewall Company of Watertown, NY. The machine offered by Bagley & Sewall had been built a couple of years earlier for the White Mountain Paper Company that went bankrupt before the machine could be started. Bagley & Sewall could therefore offer a machine at a favorable price, and at a considerable shorter time of delivery than could Pusey & Jones. Also, the Bagley & Sewall machine was somewhat wider than the machine Holmen-Hellefos had been planning. The White Mountain machine was dismantled and shipped to Drammen, Norway where it was started in 1905.

HOLMEN-HELLEFOS NEW ERA

When it was new, the Holmen-Hellefos machine was 148" wide with a wire length of 24' - 4". There were two plain presses and 29 dryers of 48" diameter. The calender stack had 6 rolls and was followed by a 2-drum upright reel. With it's great width and design speed of 130 m/min, the machine would be the widest and fastest in Norway for many years to come. Production-capacity was some 7.500 metric tons per year.

At start up, two American machine tenders were hired to get the machine running. In their effort to hire qualified personnel, Holmen-Hellefos advertised in the U. S. for Norwegians and Swedes familiar with such machines. Immediately after start-up it was discovered that the rubber-covered rolls in both presses had damages and had to be shipped back to the U. S. for repair. At that time no such work could be carried out in Norway. There were other obstacles. Like the Pusey & Jones machine at Geithus, the Bagley & Sewall machine at Holmen-Hellefos was unable to attain high-speed operation from the beginning. Operating at speeds around 100 m/min proved difficult and from that speed up, the machine was unstable. Under those conditions the machine was marginally profitable at best. Added to
that was the cost to transport groundwood by boats down the river from Hellefos to Drammen.

After some time the old plans, which involved moving the entire paper mill to Hellefos, came up again. In 1916 the final decision was made. Steps would be taken to integrate the paper mill with the ground-wood mill at Hellefos. The paper mill was shut down, and during late summer and fall of 1917 all machinery at Holmen was dismantled. Each part was marked, documented and shipped upriver. Once the machinery was gone, the buildings were torn down, bricks hacked clean and sent off the same way. At Hellefos the machine room was built somewhat bigger, allowing the wire-section to be rebuilt to a greater length and a couple of Bagley & Sewall dryers added. Start-up at Hellefos was in mid August 1919.

From that day on, the machine remained at Hellefos where it still is in operation after several rebuilds and modernizations. Thune's Machine Works of Oslo has added additional dryers. Presently the machine has 40 dryers, a calender stack from Hunt & Moscrop of England, and a Pope-type reel. The old overhead mainshaft and belt drive has been replaced with a sectional electric drive. The headbox was replaced with a Black-Clawson unit and in 1976 a Measurex computerized control system was added. A top-wire and new press- section from Ahlström came in 1987. The last modernizations were in 1994 when a new Valmet headbox replaced the Black-Clawson unit.

Despite the rebuilds and all the changes, one fact remains. The machine is still recognized as a Bagley Sewall machine. Production today is wood containing book printing papers at a speed of 500 m/min. Annual production is some 42.000 metric tons.

At the Paper History Channel we wish the old Bagley & Sewall machine and the Borregaard- Hellefos company many prosperous years to come.

Written sources: Bent Ek: Fabrikken ved Hellefossen, 1898-1998.

Photos by Mr. Bjørn Mosskull, Borregaard-Hellefos.

Thanks to: Mr. Arve Wang, Mr. Trygve Øderud and Mr. Arne Mikkelsen of the Borregaard-Hellefos company for their
cooperation.

Øyvind Haugen.
January, 19th, 2000.