Nine Dragons mulling four 50,000tpy tissue units in China
Nine Dragons Paper is mulling over installing four 50,000tpy tissue units at its flagship mill in Dongguan city, Guangdong province.
A spokesperson from the firm said the plan for the project is now in the initial stage, which is an environmental impact assessment (EIA).
More detailed planning, such as a timeline, will be determined according to the prevailing market conditions, including demand and supply forecasts, after government approval is secured.
According to the EIA file, the units will use market pulp as furnish.
The Hong-Kong listed packaging giant has long been committed to diversifying its product mix, and has already entered the coated ivory board and the printing and writing (P&W) paper sectors.
Last year, it started up two P&W paper units with a combined capacity of 450,000tpy. And it operates two 550,000tpy cartonboard units, enabling it to build its presence in the coated ivory board segment.
More firms eyeing tissue market:
Nine Dragons is only one board producer looking to join the tissue sector.
In 2010, Zhejiang Jingxing Paper announced its plan to erect two 34,000tpy tissue units at its mill in Jiaxing city, Zhejiang province.
The firm currently operates several board units with a combined capacity of 1.04m tpy.
As a first step, the firm is endeavoring to build its sales and marketing channels to promote its brand. It is doing this even before installing tissue machines.
This is a practice common to many tissue makers.
Tissue producers said that tissue and other paper and board grades are quite different in terms of branding.
Tissue is directly targeted at consumers, but the operation of other paper and board products follows a business-to-business model.
Another containerboard giant, Lee & Man Paper Manufacturing, also submitted its plan to erect three tissue machines with a combined capacity of 200,000tpy to an EIA last year.
According to its plan, the firm will dismantle two old recycled containerboard units, PMs 1 and 2, with a combined capacity of 100,000tpy at the Huangchong mill in Dongguan city, Guangdong province, and make space for the tissue machines.
But details for the projects have not been hammered out so far.
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Shandong Chenming closes 30,000tpy paper mill in northern China
Shandong Chenming Paper Holdings has shut down a 30,000tpy paper mill in Hulunbeir city, in the Inner Mongolia autonomous region.
The site, operated by Hailar Chenming Paper, stopped production at the end of May. It ran several small paper units producing low quality tissue and uncoated fine paper.
According to Shandong Chenming, all equipment at the mill will be permanently retired.
The move is in line with the country’s campaign of wiping out old and small P&B machinery. The Chinese government has recently announced it would force the closure of old pulp and paper equipment with a combined capacity of 9.7m tpy across the country by the end of this year.
Each province will have a specific target, and will provide a detailed list of machines to be closed soon. Hailar Chenming has been put on this year’s closure list by the Inner Mongolian authorities.
Last year, Shandong Chenming tried to relocate the mill, but instead decided to close it due to changing market situations.
The firm declined to reveal further details about its decision.
In 2011, the subsidiary reported a loss of RMB 810,800 ($127,643) compared with a net profit of RMB 5.4m in 2010.
The subsidiary used to be a state-owned company, and was renamed Hailar Chenming in 1999 when Shandong Chenming and the local government formed a 75-25% joint venture to operate it.
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Shanghai Orient Champion starts up tissue PM in China
Shanghai Orient Champion Paper has started up the second of two new tissue units at its mill in Shanghai.
A 40,000tpy Metso tissue unit was due to come online there by the end of March, but started up in April instead. The firm did not comment on the delay.
PM8, as the machine is called, has a trim width of 3.8m and a design speed of 1,800m/ min.
Last September, the firm also commissioned a 30,000tpy Metso Paper tissue unit dubbed PM7.
Shanghai Orient Champion operates several other, smaller tissue machines with a combined capacity around 70,000tpy.
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“World’s largest Steel Yankee for tissue” starts up”
The start-up team at Hengan Group Jinjiang
Chinese tissue producer Hengan Group Jinjiang has started up “the world’s largest Steel Yankee for tissue”.
The Andritz-supplied PrimeDry Steel Yankee has a diameter of 4.9m, a shell length of 6.2m, a design speed of 2,100m/min and a width of 5.6m.
It is part of the new Andritz PM15 that the supplier said “enables safe and energy-efficient machine operation”.
Zhang Qunfu, chief engineer of Hengan Group, said: “We already have eight Andritz machines in operation. The PM15 with the world’s largest Steel Yankee for tissue is now the icing on the cake.”
The PrimeLineTM W6 model is equipped with energy-saving components such as Yankee head insulation and a re-evaporation system.
The scope of supply also included the complete stock preparation and machine control systems.
JAPAN
Nishinihon Eizai Co starts up TT Steel Yankee Dryer
Toscotec successfully starts-up its first TT SYD in Japan
Japanese tissue producer Nishinihon Eizai Co has boosted its production capacity after it successfully started up its new TT Steel Yankee Dryer at its Tatsuno-chô site.
It is the first time supplier Toscotec has started up a TT Steel Yankee Dryer in Japan. Nishinihon Eizai is managed by its president Yasuhito Goda and is based near Osaka, having been founded in 1963.
He told TW that the company made the investment to boost production capacity, which includes the production of toilet roll and towel paper for the domestic market, and to save energy.
He said: “We also made the investment to make value-added improvements and save on the cost of production. We are very satisfied with the performance of the SYD.”
The mill houses five paper machines and produces 2,500 tonnes per month of toilet roll and tissue towel made from 100% waste paper.
The TT SYD-12FT replaced the old 12 FT Cast Iron Yankee on Tatsuno-chô PM2.
VIETNAM
Vietnam tops woodchip exports in Asia Pacific but pulp and paper capacity insufficient
Despite being the biggest woodchip exporter in the Asia Pacific region, Vietnam’s pulp and paper industry remains small and it relies heavily on imports of both fibre and finished products.
Vietnam exported 5.4m tonnes of woodchips last year, mainly acacia and eucalyptus.
That amount exceeded woodchip exports from the region’s other major exporter, Australia, which posted a total outbound shipment of 4.3m tonnes in 2011, said RISI’s director of international timber, Robert Flynn.
But Vietnam’s pulp capacity remains relatively small. According to the Vietnam Pulp and Paper Association (VPPA), the country’s total pulp capacity reaches just 550,000tpy, of which bleached hardwood kraft pulp accounts for 250,000tpy, unbleached hardwood kraft pulp 140,000tpy, while chemi thermomechanical pulp and semi-chemical pulp combined represent 160,000tpy.
The VPPA’s secretary general, Vu Ngoc Bao, pointed out that the country is shutting down unbleached hardwood kraft pulp lines, which are in a poor condition and are polluting the environment. Bao said given Vietnam’s large woodchip output, it has a potential to become a major pulp exporter.
But currently the country still needs to depend on imports of virgin fibre and recovered paper for its own paper and board production.
Last year, the country imported 132,000 tonnes of market pulp, a surge of 24% from the previous year. Its total domestic pulp production came in at 353,500 tonnes, edging up 2.2%.
Its recovered paper imports accounted for 385,568 tonnes, a sharp increase of 42.9%, while domestic collections reached 883,626 tonnes, up 20.4%.
Vietnam had a total paper and board production of 1.513m tonnes in 2011, up 16.5%.
But it also imported nearly 1.190m tonnes of paper and board, an increase of 3.4%.
Bao said most of the paper and board imports are high quality grades, such as coated printing paper, photocopy paper and specialty grades like thermal paper, carbonless paper and technical paper for industrial uses and food and beverage packaging.
Vietnam also exported 104,000 tonnes of paper products in 2011, down from 111,700 tonnes in the previous year. 70,000 tonnes of the total, or 67.3%, was joss paper shipped to Taiwan. 19.2% was stationery products exported to the USA. The remaining 19.2% was tissue jumbo rolls.
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