My First Co-op Experience

By Guest Blogger Georgia Daniel

This semester I am completing my first co-op rotation at the RockTenn mill in West Point, VA. This mill is one of RockTenn’s 13 containerboard mills and produces corrugating medium and two and three ply linerboard. The West Point mill has its own recycling area and is one of the few RockTenn mills with a fully integrated bleach plant on site. The final product is then shipped to box plants across the country to be processed. Companies that use the final products include Pizza Hut and Papa John’s.

Although I have only been at the mill for about a month, I have already met so many people willing to put time into working with me to help make this co-op a great learning experience. There are so many learning opportunities around the mill in areas such as the bleach plant, pulp mill, paper mill, power and recovery, secondary fiber, and waste water treatment. From a learning perspective, I think RockTenn’s West Point mill is the perfect learning environment for students that would like to learn about the papermaking process as a whole, while staying in one place.