The United States aims to reduce paper production costs by 17% with the CRAFT program

The U.S. Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) has officially launched the Center for Research and Advancement of Forest Product Technologies (CRAFT), a national initiative designed to drag the aging domestic pulp, paper, and packaging infrastructure into the digital era.

The program arrives with ambitious targets: reducing energy intensity across mill operations by up to 25% and cutting production costs by up to 17%. While these figures represent programmatic goals rather than achieved metrics, they highlight the critical inefficiencies currently burdening legacy manufacturing sites across the country.

Bridging the gap between theory and industrial scaling

For decades, the primary hurdle in modernizing heavy industrial processes like pulping and chemical recovery has been the immense financial risk of implementing untested technologies at scale. CRAFT addresses this bottleneck directly by focusing on modeling, pilot-scale demonstrations, and rigorous testing before full industrial deployment.

Under the direction of Dan Coughlin, the center will leverage the combined capabilities of the National Laboratory of the Rockies, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, and Idaho National Laboratory. The consortium aims to provide mill operators with a de-risked pathway to adopt advanced systems.

Digital twins and next-generation pulping

The technological scope of CRAFT moves beyond basic automation. The initiative targets specific operational pain points through:

• Smart manufacturing integration: Deployment of advanced sensors and artificial intelligence to predict equipment failures and optimize runability.
• Digital twins: Creating virtual replicas of mill operations to simulate process changes without disrupting actual production.
• Process innovation: Research into next-generation pulping, advanced chemical recovery, and more efficient dewatering and drying techniques.

By providing a framework that connects national laboratory capabilities directly with industry partners, CRAFT represents a pragmatic approach to revitalizing a sector that supports thousands of domestic manufacturing jobs. If the initiative can successfully translate its pilot-scale successes into the targeted 17% cost reductions on the factory floor, it will provide U.S. manufacturers with a vital buffer against increasingly aggressive global competition.