10.000 batches later

Text: Annaleena Stenman

We'd love to tell you the long and intricate story about the production of Lapua's wet modification batch number 10,000, but unfortunately its tantalising details aren’t quite clear to operator Jani Alanen. It was a regular Tuesday evening in September 2023. The supervisor had entered into the schedule that it was time to begin production of Classic 145. Alanen opened a new logbook and noticed that the running batch number was exactly 10,000. We've done quite a few batches with this system, he thought to himself. No drama, no happy tears, and no pats on the back. But at least we had some coffee and pastries to mark the occasion.

The first batch was recorded by the tool on March 1, 2010, with batch number 6. At that time, operator Hannu Alho manufactured the Raisamyl 01151 product from start to finish. Consecutive numbering began at 6, since the first 5 batches were demo batches run by Esko Hagren, the developer of “Modificator” –which he later removed from the tool.

Looking back even further, batch number 6 is by no means the first wet modification batch in the company's history. In fact, the very first wet modification was completed in Lapua in 1980. Back then, production and its intermediate stages were recorded on graph paper, but the introduction of the ABB Automation System in the early 1990s made things easier to document. The logbooks, and their authors, have changed over the years, but the number of batches produced is staggering: an estimated 35,000!

Wet modification remains an important way for Chemigate to process starch, as the reactor-specific liquid batch provides a uniform end result and security of supply. According to Alanen, the most important thing in wet modification is to avoid mixing products and dosing chemicals in the wrong places. Alanen himself tends to double-check that the valves in the dosing line are turned correctly before he starts pumping. This is something he's had to learn the hard way:

“In the 1990s, I was starting to operate alone for the first time. There was a problem with the pH cycle of reactor 15 and it had to be manually run down. After a while, then-foreman Seppo Sievi-Korte came calmly into the control room to ask me if I was alright. The lower floor of the wet modification area was apparently 'a bit' wavy – the floor was covered with a 15 cm thick layer of starch slurry. A more experienced operator helped sort out the problem, which was caused by an inadvertently open valve. At the time, I wasn't aware that reactor 1 and 15 shared a valve, because it was closed from a different page in the programme.”