Tissue World Magazine
Alexandra Stuthridge, Technical Business Manager, BioProducts Institute (BPI)

(News from RISI) Brazilian pulp and paper producer Nobrecel expects to produce the first roll of tissue paper sometime this week at the Pindamonhangaba mill, in São Paulo state, southeast Brazil.

A contact at the company said: “In the past week the team was on site conducting the last adjustments and finalising the equipment maintenance.

“The power was re-established on 25 August as we expected, and we’re hoping to produce our first roll of paper by the end of this week.”

According to the contact, most of the company’s current contracts were closed with Nobrecel’s former customers.

Many were future orders which helped finance the investment in recovering and reopening the Nobrecel site.

Nobrecel filed for bankruptcy on August 2013 and has been recovered by the Coruputuba pulp and paper cooperative (Cocepelco), a group comprised by former employees which injected approximately Real 3-4 million ($1.3-1.7 million) in the venture.

The expectation is to fire up within the next few days the paper machines (PM) No.1 and No. 3, which have a combined output of approximately 18,000tpy.

In a second stage of the project restart, Cocepelco plans to recover and resume operations on the plant’s 73,000tpy bleached eucalyptus kraft (BEK) pulp line, which has been idled since January 2012.