(News from RISI) – Hengan International has fired up a new 60,000tpy tissue machine at its mill in Chongqing municipality, southwestern China.
The Andritz-supplied PM23 has a trim width of 5.6m, a design speed of 2,000m/min, and also features a 18-foot Steel Yankee dryer.
It is the fourth machine to have recently come on stream at the site. An identical line started trial runs in March.
The first two units were also provided by Andriz and were commissioned in 2012.
The start-ups have boosted the total tissue capacity at the Chongqing facility to 240,000tpy.
Hengan currently boasts an entire tissue capacity of approximately 1.26m tpy, with five tissue paper mills operating across China.
Already the second largest tissue producer in the country, it is still expanding, with an eye to increasing its total capacity to 1.43m tpy by year’s end or the first half of 2018.
Two 60,000tpy Valmet-supplied TMs are destined for installation at an existing mill in Weifang city, Shandong province.
The company is also constructing a new plant in Changji, in the Xinjiang autonomous region.
Two Toscotec tissue machines – each able to produce 20,000-25,00tpy – are scheduled to come online by the end of this year.
Last month the Hong Kong-listed hygiene products giant published its annual report for the year ending December.
It reported a 3.3% uptick in its revenue to RMB 19.3bn last year, while its net profit rose by 7.4% year-on-year to RMB 3.5bn.
Revenue from its tissue paper segment increased by 4.3% to RMB 9.1bn, accounting for 47% of the company’s total turnover.
The gross profit margin for its tissue business climbed slightly from 35.6% in 2015 to 37.9% in 2016 due to the lower price for wood pulp.
