In 2024, TWM interviewed tissue mill executives in Latin America, India, Indonesia, the United Kingdom, Northern Africa – Algeria, and Türkiye for Country Reports. One year on, we revisit a selection of the leading companies to assess their progress.
ALGERIA, NORTHERN AFRICA
Machinery increases to cope with rising demands
In June 2024, TWM interviewed Belkacem Becharef, Africaine Paper Mills (APM) General Manager, for the Africa Country Report.
APM is now a leading manufacturer of tissue paper jumbo rolls across the Middle East and North African (MENA) region. Its 50,000m² Rouïba plant is located 22 kilometres in the eastern suburbs of Algiers and within Algeria’s 2,381,741km² – the largest land mass in Africa.
At the time of the interview, the company was enjoying “a new oxygen” for its products, with Algeria attracting a lot of trade because of the country’s low costs base. It had moved into tissue production in 2019 when it started up its first tissue machine, an Andritz-supplied PrimeLineCOMPACT TM. Investment in tissue was key to its growth, and in May 2024 the company further boosted its production capacity across the MENA tissue market after investing in a Toscotec-supplied rewinder line. Start-up of the OPTIMA 1800 slitter came on stream in the fourth quarter of 2024, processing 2,800mm width parent reels using two unwind stands.
With growth in the local and regional tissue markets, Becharef had said that when the business had finished its PM2 project, it may also come back to converting, or look at investing in a second tissue line.
Now in June 2025, and the company has developed further by installing a new dust removal for its Valmet rewinder, which collects the dust from the sheet. “Due to this new rewinder, our orders for one ply tissue have increased, with our production increasing around 15% when compared to the last two to three years,” Becharef says. “We have also reached the machine’s manufacturing target of 30,000 ton per year.”
Recently, Belkacem says the local market has been growing even more than previously, to the extent that the business is not able to satisfy its customers’ orders. “For that we decided to bring another line to confirm our presence in the market,” he says.
The plan for the rest of 2025 and into 2026 is to install one new boiler of around 10/12 ton per hour – and a new tissue machine with a capacity of 30,000 ton per year.
