Mr. HINCK has been involved in the dissolving and paper industry since his 1962 graduation from the College of Forestry at Syracuse University. While at the College of Forestry, he majored in Wood Chemistry and Pulp and Paper science. He was initially employed by RAYONIER, INC. as research scientist in the Viscose and Cellulose Acetate research groups. His next position at RAYONIER, INC. was technical marketing specialist for major North American Acetate, Viscose, and other specialty areas as well as marketing manager for Central and South America.
After two years’ employment at National Starch as Manager of Development for paper machine wet end additives, Mr. Hinck returned to Rayonier’s Central Research Laboratory at Shelton, Wa. He subsequently assumed positions of added responsibility at the laboratories with his last position as manager of Pulping and Bleaching coordinating development issues for Rayonier’s Sulfite, conventional Kraft, and Prehydrolyzed Kraft pulp mills. The combined capacity of these mills when he left Rayonier was about 1MM ADMT/A. While at Shelton, he was asked by the Production department to become a member of a elite team to rectify technical issues at Rayonier’s Port Cartier Quebec manufacturing facility. This 1.5 year assignment as TECHNICAL DIRECTOR at Port Cartier was successfully completed. Also while at Rayonier, Mr. Hinck was the principal author of a chapter regarding the manufacture of dissolving pulp in TAPPI’s textbook series.
He was then asked to direct and modify the grade structure of Western Pulp’s dissolving pulp mill at Port Alice, BC. As a result, cash flow and profits changed from greatly negative to greatly positive within 12 months. This resulted from producing more specialty than commodity viscose pulps. Simultaneously at Western, Mr. Hinck was responsible for some of the technical aspects of the startup of the Squamish softwood kraft MC displacement bleach plant. He also developed innovative new pulp grades for Squamish. At Western, Mr. Hinck was in charge of Technical Marketing and was also their Technical Director.
A three year assignment as Technical Manager then followed at the Saiccor sulfite dissolving pulp mill in South Africa. Major projects included: projects to improve quality and uniformity, development of expansion options to increase production from 440,000 ADMT/A to 600,000 ADMT/A, directly link customers and plant personal via marketing visits, technology transfer, and multiracial staff development.
After returning to the United States in 1988, Mr. Hinck has started his own business working both with the consumers and producers of dissolving and paper pulp and with chemical suppliers to these industries. The purpose is to provide state of the art technologies as well as provide marketing guidance to the above. He has just successfully implemented a major wood furnish change at a 700 ADMT/D sulfite mill, converted a small kraft mill to the prehydrolyzed kraft process, developed a sisal purification process, assisted in implementing a Cluster Rule at several mills, and completed a marketing study of the dissolving pulp industry.