(News from RISI) – APP China has stayed on course with its plans for tissue paper expansion, bringing six tissue machines online at its Haikou mill on the Chinese island of Hainan.
The new units have a combined capacity of 200,000tpy.
These units include two 60,000tpy A Celli machines, PMs 23 and 24, which each having a width of 5.6m and a design speed of 2,400m/min, and four 2.8m wide machines assembled by APP China’s subsidiary, Jinshun Machinery.
Each has an individual capacity of 20,000tpy, according to a company spokesman.
The smaller Jinshun units feature headboxes, 16-feet yankee dryers and hoods imported from Europe, while the remaining parts of the machine were sourced in China to keep costs down.
“These four machines are the upgraded versions that Jinshun managed to build using the knowledge and experience it had gained from assembling similar types of tissue production lines previously. They are designed to be operated at a higher speed,” said the contact.
With a maximum speed of 1,800m/min, these units are capable of running at 1,600m/min soon after startup.
All six PMs came on stream following the commissioning of two 60,000tpy, 5.6m wide A Celli units earlier this year at the Haikou complex.
Prior to that, the facility housed 12 tissue machines with a combined capacity of 288,000tpy.
With the eight PMs being commissioned this year, the mill will have twenty tissue machines with a total capacity of 608,000tpy.
And there are more machines to come. In APP China’s plan, a further ten 60,000tpy A Celli machines and eight Jinshun units will be added to the complex by the end of 2015.
If the 18 PMs come online as planned, they will boost the total tissue capacity at the mill to a whopping 1.368 million tpy.
The tissue machines are integrated with the plant’s 1.8 million tpy bleached hardwood kraft pulp line.
