(News from RISI)- All of the paper mills in Baoding city in the northern Chinese province of Hebei have halted production to upgrade boilers in a bid to cut air pollution.
The move is due to a mandatory anti-pollution campaign launched by local authorities.
Local media reported that all tissue mills there were asked to stop production from 14 November to 14 December.
Coal boilers are to be upgraded to use natural gas.
Baoding is an important production base for tissue in North China. It is home to more than 100 small tissue mills with a combined capacity of around 1 million tpy.
These mills have caused many pollution complaints and the city is near Beijing, which has been troubled with serious smog.
The Baoding government has required all factories, including paper mills, to upgrade their boilers to reduce exhaust emissions.
Sources reported that some mills have already finished rebuilding their boilers, and have restarted production.
Fuyang shutdowns: In Fuyang city, a hub for low-quality cartonboard production in Zhejiang province, local authorities are also systematically shutting down small machines and mills.
According to Zheng Mengqiao, General Secretary of the Zhejiang Paper Association, the Zhejiang provincial government has released a specific document guiding the closures.
More than 100 mills are scheduled to be shut down. The deadline for the closures is the end of 2013.
In the future, he said, water consumption and Chemical Oxygen Demand (COD) emissions, a water emission factor describing the amount of oxygen consumed when dissolved matter in effluent water oxidizes, will be strictly limited. The introduction of a quota system is being discussed.
If a mill uses up its annual quota for water consumption or COD within 10 months, Zheng explained, it may have to halt production for the rest of the year.
To curb pollution at a national level, China has launched a capacity closure campaign across the country. A lot of old and small machined are wiped out each year.
This year, the P&P industry is scheduled to wipe out 6.21 million tpy of old capacity.
In 2012, the closure goal for the industry was 9.95 million tpy, and the final results are still being checked by authorities.
In 2011, a total of 8.31 million tpy of outdated P&P capacity was retired.
