SKF will be the main supplier of bearings to Metso Paper, which is supplying Stora Enso’s Langerbrugge mill in Belgium with the world’s largest paper machine.
This machine will have a wire width of 11.1 metres and will produce about 400,000 tonnes of newsprint a year. In the Metso paper machine there are some 10,000 SKF items, including bearings, sleeves, lock nuts, washers and bearing housings. The largest bearing – a spherical roller bearing – has an outer diameter of 1.3 metres and weighs 1,200 kilograms.
The newsprint production is scheduled to begin in June 2003.