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NBCC Power Engineering Students Tour Pulp and Paper Mill

On February 23, 2016 the first year Power Engineering class from NBCC Saint John visited the J.D. Irving, Limited Pulp and Paper Mill to receive a tour of the mill and gain insight into their future careers as power engineers.

“At the Irving Pulp and Paper Mill everything that a power engineer is going to do is there. They have bark boilers, recovery boiler, turbines, and the auxiliary pumps and equipment,” says Andrew Metcalfe, instructor of the Power Engineering course at NBCC. “It’s a really fantastic way to take the application of theory and put it into some real life practice.”

JDI is proud to employ over 1,400 graduates from New Brunswick Community College (NBCC) and Collège Communautaire du Nouveau-Brunswick (CCNB) across our operations, over 97% here in New Brunswick.

“Tours are imperative! Classroom time does not always paint an accurate picture of the work and day to day tasks a Power Engineer does in the field,” says Jean-Francois Goguen, CRU training coordinator at IPP and NBCC Power Engineering Class of 2012 Alumni. “Students need to see and draw their own opinion and feelings of that particular industry where they are touring.”

Equipment donation is part of an ongoing partnership between the province’s community colleges and J.D. Irving, Limited; in 2014, Irving Pulp and Paper donated several pieces of equipment, including a steam turbine and a vacuum pump to NBCC’s Saint John campus.

Irving Pulp & Paper mill is in the midst of the largest mill modernization project in Canada since 1993, and yet the daily operation of the mill continues. The current phase of the Irving Pulp & Paper Mill Modernization project is approximately 87% complete—all without a single break in production. The new equipment and technology is on schedule for commissioning and start-up by March 2016.