(News from RISI) – China’s Bazhou Mingxing Paper has started up a 12,500tpy tissue paper machine at its mill in Korla city in the Xinjiang autonomous region.
The 2.76m wide PM, which has a design speed of 770m/min, is one of a handful of machines capable of making virgin fibre-based tissue products in Xinjiang, using market pulp imported from Russian as furnish.
The autonomous region in China’s northwest is large and sparsely populated, covering one sixth of the country’s territory.
Demand for good quality tissue products is growing in the area in line with its rapid urbanisation and improving standards of living.
Korla is the second largest city in Xinjiang after Urumqi, with a population of nearly half a million.
Bazhou Mingxing’s output on the new unit is destined mainly on the local market.
The firm plans to build more machines at the plant in the next few years, eventually boosting its total tissue capacity to 60,000tpy.
But the timeline is still to be hammered out.
