Mercer International and Valmet have signed a long-term agreement to accelerate Mercer's global digital transformation program. The implementation of the agreement starts with the replacement of distributed control systems (DCS) at the Mercer Peace River pulp mill in Alberta and the Mercer Celgar pulp mill in British Columbia, Canada with the Valmet DNA Automation System.

Valmet DNA is a single automation system for process, machine, drives and quality controls. Its intuitive user interfacemakes the most meaningful information available to users based on their roles - regardless of their location, enabling collaboration and real-time performance optimization based on data analytics anywhere and anytime.

"We wanted a partner that can provide a strong DCS solution but at the same time help improve our performance through better data utilization, improved internal benchmarking and collaboration across all our sites. We chose Valmet because of their expertise in pulp combined with extensive automation offering and strong digitalization capabilities," says Christoph Grewe-Franze, CIO, Mercer International.

Mercer will benefit from better and connected DCS data communication and analysis of real-time performance across all their operations. This will improve diagnostics and troubleshooting while reducing redundancies and downtime. A solid foundation for advanced data utilization with integrated industrial internetconnectivity, global collaboration, operational consistency and continuity will be realized.

"We are happy to continue our long-time collaboration with Mercer International with this significant agreement. We have a full automation and digitalization offering to manage and optimize processes, including cloud connectivity, analytical applications, and full support both locally and remotely to serve the needs of our customers in various industries. We are delighted to build these capabilities together with Mercer to increase their competitiveness," says Sami Riekkola, President, Automation business line, Valmet.

Valmet DNA's new user interface enables real-time performance optimization and collaboration between different user groups regardless of their location.

About Mercer

Mercer International Inc., is a diversified global producer of forest products, bioproducts, and green electricity with operations in Germany, Canada, the United States, and Australia with a consolidated annual production capacity of approximately 2.2 million tonnes of kraft pulp and 550 million board feet of softwood lumber.