2017 has seen an increase in tissue projects compared to the same time a year earlier. TWM’s annual survey charts all new capacity being added, ordered or in final planning stages during 2017-2018. The survey is interested in projects that will increase tissue capacity – the numerous smaller rebuilds around the world that won’t impact capacity have been excluded.

All the figures in the survey are based on the best information provided and this has included TWM’s own extensive research as well as relying on reliable responses from companies asked to detail their present and future developments.

It also includes first-hand knowledge gained from the many visits to tissue mills around the world for TWM’s bimonthly Country Reports analysis, which during 2017 included visits to your peers and competitors in Italy, Brazil, Scandinavia, Canada and Japan.

We aim to meet tissue mills that have news and experience that relates to you – a new tissue machine start-up, a new products launch, new export target markets. The visits give TWM a unique in-sight into why that region and its tissue players are investing or not.

Tissue mill projects were up this year, with many economies settling and exports growing. However, for this year, as with last, many of the projects are subject to revision as, in many cases, information was not provided because it was deemed commercially sensitive or subject to financial uncertainty.

It’s also the case that a distinctive feature of this time in the cyclical development of tissue production is marked by the timely closure of old facilities to make way for the new.

In some cases, delayed start-ups have meant projects have been repeated from last year’s survey; some of the ‘new’ capacity announced this year in fact includes some of last year’s estimate.

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Project Survey 2017 / 2018: Click to view

Many projects have also been purposefully delayed, largely to deal with overcapacity or economic conditions.

Additionally, a number of companies also issued projections for impressive tonnes per day figures, which will add, in the terms of the survey, unknown capacity. With that in mind, in the past 12 months the global tissue industry has seen another substantial amount of new capacity announced or coming on stream, with 121 projects. This is compared to 2016’s 111 projects, 2015’s 126 projects, and the 146 in 2014.

Most of this year’s projects are once again set in China, which claims 37 projects compared to last year’s 35. Outside of China, the other global player America, which claims seven, down from nine projects in 2016.

Growth is also still focused on or from countries such as Brazil which claims nine projects, a decrease (likely because of economic reasons) from last year’s 12 projects.

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Project Survey 2017 / 2018 : Click to view

Japan also has an impressive nine projects in the pipeline. Overcapacity in many markets has evidently resulted in a slowdown of new project announcements. As with last year, the scale of these machines is also significant – a large proportion of these new start-up machines have widths of 5.6m.

In 2018, TWM endeavours to bring you more in-depth analysis on tissue mills and their projects across the world with our Country Reports focused on regions as far ranging as USA, Mexico, China, Turkey, UAE and Thailand.

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Project Survey 2017 / 2018: Click to view

 

CAUTION: All aggregates taken from the  survey should be treated with some caution. While all care has been taken to publish comprehensive data, it is inevitable that projects will be missing or details incomplete. Many projects have also been delayed so start-up data used in the 2016 Project Survey has had to be repeated. We welcome your help to ensure as comprehensive a survey as possible at the end of 2018.