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– Metsä-Botnia has announced it will halt production at all of its four pulp mills successively in September and October for annual maintenance. A company spokesperson confirmed the loss in production would amount to a total of 60,000 t. The company produces softwood pulp as well as hardwood pulp at its Finnish mills Joutsena, Kemi, Rauma and Äänekoski which have an overall capacity of 2.4 million t per year.
Smurfit Kappa Group will undergo restructuring. From 1 September 2011, the group’s European business will be divided into a raw material and a packaging arm. As a result, all folding box plants will be managed as part of the group’s packaging division together with the corrugated board plants, while the board and base paper plants will be united under the roof of the group’s paper division.
The pulp manufacturer Millar Western is receiving financial assistance from Alberta’s provincial government for building a biomass-fired power station at its Whitecourt pulp mill. The company reports having been awarded CAD17.5m from the provincial government’s Ecotrust programme. Plans are being made for a power station that transforms the organic components of sewage from pulp production into biogas. The mill has a capacity of 310,000 tpy of bleached CTMP pulp. Construction work will take roughly two years once the approval phase has been completed.
Sappi Fine Paper North America has sold its idled Muskegon pulp and paper mill to the demolition, dismantling, and industrial remediation service company Melching Inc. According to Sappi, Melching is considering redeveloping the site for other industrial uses. Financial details were not disclosed.
Abitibi Bowater will receive an electricity price rebate from the government of the Canadian province of Ontario for the Thunder Bay mill under the Northern Industrial Electricity Rate (NIER) Program. The electricity price rebate will amount to CAD0.02 per KWh. At the pulp and paper mill’s current consumption, this corresponds to savings of over CAD7.5m per year, the local government confirmed.
International Paper will merge its packaging division, which is doing business under the name of Shorewood Packaging, with AGI World, the packaging division of US Atlas Holdings LLC. The partners expect the relevant agreements to be concluded before the end of the current financial year. The value of the transaction was not disclosed. After obtaining the necessary approvals, the new company will do business under the name of AGI-Shorewood.
Smurfit Kappa Group recommissioned its rebuilt PM 3 in Wrexen in April 2011 and has meanwhile started to produce marketable white top testliner. The company informed EUWID of this progress. The machine at the Wrexen plant previously produced 220,000 tpy of brown testliner and is now a swing machine that will manufacture up to 120,000 t of white-top testliner.
31.08.2011
Markets
- German paper market still suffering from seasonal effects and inventory destocking
- Sharp increase in worldwide pulp stocks in July
- World market pulp statistics
- Inventories and consumption of pulp consumers in Europe
- Will India’s pulp market follow in China’s footsteps?
- Russian pulp and paper industry still hoping for strong investors
- Spain’s new waste legislation gives rise to debates in the recovered paper industry
- Expansion plans in the pulp sector will lead to substantial growth in hardwood pulp capacities
- Stagnation in Finnish paper production in first half-year
- Baypapier: energy policy is threat to paper industry
- More capacity increases reported again in Europe
Companies
- Ahlstrom considering job cuts at Karhula and Mikkeli mills
- Segezha Packaging mill in Saransk standing still after fire
- Italy’s paper industry calls for change
- Mayr-Melnhof establishes third packaging site in Turkey
- Kipas Holding to enter recycled containerboard market
- Hunsfos Fabrikker in financial dire straits
- Bong to cease envelope production in Belgium
- Tullis Russell to axe 43 jobs in Markinch
- ICT commissions a new tissue machine in France
- New Page to indefinitely close Port Hawkesbury mill
- Abitibi Bowater invests and cuts jobs at Iroquois Falls mill