Sappi builds smart nurseries for a changing environment

Bongani Shozi the Nursery Manager welcomes the visitors to Clan Nursery

Sappi's nursery transformation began with a fundamental question: how could the company simultaneously reduce unit costs, improve productivity, increase survival rates of seedlings before and after planting, and minimise its reliance on chemicals for pests and disease control while mitigating climate change? 

Wynand de Swardt, Sappi South Africa's Divisional Nursery Manager, says the answer lay in over 25 years of tree breeding at the Sappi Shaw Research Centre and a lean-driven approach to identifying areas for improvement in its four nurseries. 

Extreme weather conditions and the noticeable shifting seasons with later summer rainfall are reducing or extending the planting season, depending on the location and site conditions of the plantations. Hence, there is a drive for developing drought, frost, disease tolerance, volume growth, and pulp yield. 

Tree breeding

Traditionally, tree breeding programmes are initiated by making mass selections in commercial plantations. This is followed by grafting, collecting seeds, establishing provenance trials and then waiting 10 to 20 years for test data, depending on the species. 

Damien Naidu, Sappi's General Manager of Research, Planning and Nurseries, says the company realised early on that the best climate change adaptation strategy is an accelerated and holistic tree breeding programme. 

Molecular technology and biotechnology tools allow a breeder to recover progeny data from existing plantations, predict breeding values and identify genetically superior individuals at the initial stage of the breeding program, effectively speeding up improved growing stock by at least a decade.

Hybrids

The rapid shift from planting pure species to more productive, better adapted, and pest- and disease-resistant hybrids is transforming the profile of hardwood and softwood trees grown in Sappi's South African plantations.

Speaking at the recent Modern Silviculture Symposium: Silviculture 4.0 in Howick, KwaZulu-Natal, Wynand said, "The main objective of a nursery is to have plants ready when customers need them. A nursery is a profit centre adding value to our operations by ensuring that quality seedlings are produced efficiently, safely, cost-effectively and in time by well-trained and engaged staff".

That is easier said than done. Nurseries must be resilient to meet the demand for plants in a shorter time while the costs of resources and labour escalate. These challenges are magnified by ageing nursery infrastructure, broken process flows and increasing risks from pests and diseases driven by the changing environment and a lack of approved chemicals. 

A quicker turnaround time was critical for tree breeders and planners to cope with a globalised world's dynamic challenges and demands. Something had to change because Sappi's nurseries were not meeting their customers' demands and needs. 

Sappi has four nurseries, Ngodwana and Escarpment Nurseries in Mpumalanga and Richmond and Clan in KwaZulu-Natal. They produced 57.5 million seedlings in 2023 (47 million in 2017), 43 million for Sappi's plantations and 14.5 million seedlings were sold to other growers. It also significantly increased external seed sales. 

Wynand said the developments at Sappi's state-of-the-art Clan nursery at Albert Falls in the KZN midlands were central to rapidly deploying improved trees into the plantations. To get to this point, he gave the attendees at the silviculture symposium a brief history of the company's nurseries and some of the operational challenges that arose. 

In the beginning

In October 1988, Sappi bought the Waterton Timber Company and its nursery in KwaMbonambi, KwaZulu-Natal (KZN) in October 1988. E. grandis was the primary genotype cultivated in open hedges and tables, which exacerbated its tendency to be disease-prone. Water supply was always a challenge. The nursery was later closed.

Construction work on the Ngodwana Nursery near Machadorp in Mpumalanga commenced between 1986 and 1989, and it soon produced 18 million seedlings a year. Improvements in tree breeding and processing technologies put pressure on the Ngodwana Nursery. In 2015, Sappi rebuilt it to deliver 10 million seedlings and 7 million cuttings. 

"Our focus on productivity led to clonal development and we had to adapt the nurseries from producing plants from seeds to cuttings. Changing a nursery system is a significant investment in the future and involves the whole silviculture value chain", Wynand remarked.

The Richmond Nursery was established as a cost-effective operation in 1992, with 36 permanent staff producing 16.5 million seedlings. However, it suffered severe storm damage and, with a single borehole, ran into water supply issues.

Twello Nursery was acquired in 1996 near Barberton in Mpumalanga. The open root nursery produced P. patula, P. taeda and P. elliottii from seeds. Encouraged by the results of research into pine-cutting propagation, Sappi established a one million cuttings operation at Twello. 

Escarpment Nursery was next and saw several changes, enlargement, and improvements, including the growth of hedges in bags and shade-netted structures over 25 years. It had a capacity of 3.2 million pine cuttings. 

Clan Nursery

Wynand said Clan Nursery's development began in 2011 as a greenfield project. "The site was carefully selected to ensure sufficient electricity and water of the required quality and, importantly, it could provide employment for people from nearby communities". 

In the first phase, Clan was designed to produce 7 million GU (E. grandis x E. urophylla) seedlings. In the second phase, it expanded to produce 17 million GU, GN (E. grandis x E. nitens) and PPTL (P. patula × P. tecunumanii low elevation) seedlings. 

Going lean

When it was time for phase two, Wynand explained, they formed a multi-disciplinary team led by a process engineer. They did value stream mapping, time studies, root cause analysis and fault tree analysis. 

The outcomes were two main goals:

"Our lean team identified focus areas and developed a lean action plan. The objective was to reduce unit costs and increase revenue. Numerous time and work studies highlighted areas that would boost productivity. For example, time studies showed that it took, on average, 2,5 hours to get cuttings from the rooting hedges to propagation and into the germination tunnels". 

Rooting efficiency

Wynand said, "In 2013, we engaged with Ellepot because rooting efficiency is critical", he said. Instead of planting a seedling into a plastic insert in a Unigrow tray, Ellepot is a plug wrapped in degradable paper that is not removed when planting".

An Ellepot FlexAIR propagation system was installed. The machine automatically deposits the growing medium onto the paper, encloses and glues the paper around the medium to form the pot shapes and places it into the trays reading to receive the cuttings. 

The Ellepot system facilitates benefits, including an air-pruned root system and a stabilised plug that can be handled early in the nursery cycle. It is also well suited to manual and mechanised planting in the field. 

Sappi and Ellepot invested months in developing a tray system for the Ellepots that met Sappi's unique requirements. Bongani Shozi, Clan's Nursery Manager, said the many benefits of the new trays include perfectly formed root architecture, ease of handling, and no time wasted searching for inserts infield and washing trays and inserts when they return from the field. 

"The biggest benefit for us is that we can get the plants out of the nursery two weeks earlier than before. We have reduced the transit time and transplant shock. The less stress there is, the better the rooting and less mortality because the plants capture the pit quicker and easier", remarked Bongani.

Productivity

Between September 2023 and September 2024, Clan's system changes included: 

Wynand said the outcomes of these changes are "just a step towards sustainability". 

The nursery facility now has a massive solar system with 2,5 hours of battery capacity, generators, and an upgraded pump room. Water is recycled, and the irrigation systems are optimised. Water storage was increased to five days. 

The Ellepots produce 75% of the product, and the Unigrow trays and inserts are used to increase production. The changes have increased Clan's Ellepot production to 28,000 pots per hour. Wynand said Bongani and his teams had an initial target of 17 million per year, which has been pushed to 20 million. 

Sappi's Escarpment and Ngodwana nursery upgrades are complete, and Richmond's is underway. Sappi's nurseries are integrated with its research and existing and new technologies to manage risk and improve silviculture practices and diversification into new processes, technologies and markets. 

By Joy Crane

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