The control room overlooks the new line through a wall of safety glass. On the screens, numbers cycle through in green—temperatures, motor loads, production totals. Below, finished pellets stream into bags that index automatically under the discharge chute. The line in Busan has been running for three weeks now, and the operators have settled into the rhythm of startup, steady-state production, and shutdown.

Market Background

South Korea’s pet industry has grown faster than almost anyone predicted. Ten years ago, cat litter was an afterthought—clay from multinational brands, whatever the local pet shop stocked. Today, consumers read labels. They know about strip mining for clay. They know about landfill volume. And they’re willing to pay more for products that don’t come with environmental baggage.

Paper litter addresses both concerns. The raw material is recycled—newspaper offcuts, office paper, cardboard trimmings that would otherwise go to landfill. The finished product is biodegradable; flushable, even, if the customer’s plumbing can handle it. And the absorption characteristics, properly engineered, match or exceed clay.

Raw Material and Formulation

The line draws from two feedstock streams. The primary stream is pre-consumer paper waste—trim from printing operations, envelope manufacturing, packaging plants. This material is clean, consistent, and available year-round. The secondary stream is post-consumer, collected through municipal recycling programs, which requires more sorting and carries higher variability.

The formulation includes additives for odor control—sodium bicarbonate for acid neutralization, activated carbon for adsorption—blended at rates determined by lab testing of incoming paper batches. Too much additive affects pellet formation; too little compromises performance. Finding the balance required three weeks of trials during commissioning.

Process Design and Technical Features

The line follows a sequence specific to paper pelleting:

• Raw material intake and pre-shredding breaks bales and removes contaminants
• Hammer mill reduces paper to fiber length optimal for pellet formation
• Rotary dryer adjusts moisture to the narrow window required for soft-die pelleting
• Pellet mill with soft-die configuration forms lightweight cylinders without over-compression
• Counterflow cooler stabilizes pellets before handling
• Vibrating screen removes fines for reprocessing
• Automatic bagging with dust control

The soft-die configuration is the critical element. Paper pellets require less density than fuel pellets; over-compression reduces absorbency and makes pellets too hard for cats to dig in. RICHI’s engineers specified die geometry with reduced compression ratios and roller pressure adjusted downward from biomass standards.

Installation and Commissioning

Equipment arrived in Busan during December’s cold weather, containers stacked at the port while customs cleared. Installation started immediately after delivery, working through the year-end holidays to meet the customer’s schedule.

Commissioning revealed the expected challenges. Paper variability meant moisture adjustments from batch to batch. Fines generation ran higher than projections until operators learned to read the system’s responses and adjust feeder speeds accordingly. By the third week, though, the line ran steadily at 3 tons per hour, with pellets meeting the customer’s specifications for absorption and dust.

Market and Environmental Impact

The customer’s marketing department has already positioned the product as “eco-friendly Korean litter” for the domestic market. Initial retail placement focuses on specialty pet stores where consumers seek out premium options. If adoption meets projections, the line will run double shifts within the year.

For RICHI, the project represents another entry in the specialty pet products portfolio—a category with different requirements than feed or biomass, but growing fast enough to justify the engineering attention.