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• RGHC generated intense shear rates and a violent form of developed cavitation. • The RGHC is successful at refining pulp with the usual consistency of 3%. • The physical properties of produced paper sheets were similar to newsprint paper. • Cavitation proved to be more economical in comparison to a Valley beater. Refining of cellulose pulp is a critical step in obtaining high quality paper characteristics, however, this process is slow and costly especially for refining longer conifer fibers which are the preferred source for high quality paper production and give the paper its strength. In this study, we have applied a novel rotation generator of hydrodynamic cavitation for refining conifer rich pulp samples. Our results show that the device is capable of generating intense shear forces and multiple zones of developed cavitation and is successful in increasing the drainage rate of high consistency pulp (3%). The paper produced by means of the obtained pulp has higher quality because of its higher tensile index (50.5 kN m kg−1) and burst index (3 kPa m2 g−1). These physical parameters were sufficient for newsprint paper and other paper/board quality manufacture. In addition, this laboratory scale rotation generator proved to be economically efficient in comparison to the routinely employed laboratory beaters. To our knowledge, this is the first example of using hydrodynamic cavitation for the refinement of softwood fiber pulp of standard industrial consistencies (3%). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]