Norske Skog announced that the start-up of the rebuilt PM 1 at its Golbey mill in France will we delayed and has been again postponed from Q2 2024 to the second half of next year due to delivery delays.
In addition, the net investment amount for the conversion project will increase from €265m to €300m, primarily due to increased purchase prices for goods and services as well as somewhat delayed deliveries of equipment. In July this year, the company had postponed the start-up to Q2 2024 in order to align it with the commissioning of the new biomass boiler. Originally, start-up of the rebuilt paper machine was scheduled for the fourth quarter of this year.
The Golbey project is to convert PM 1 from newsprint to recycled containerboard production. The rebuilt paper machine will have an output capacity of 550,000 tpy, and Norske Skog expects the machine to run at 95 per cent of full capacity within two to three years after start-up. PM 1 formerly produced up to 250,000 tpy of newsprint and was stopped in the fourth quarter of 2022 to commence the rebuild.
Norske Skog explains that the conversion of the paper machine at its Golbey mill has a massive scope and is being carried out during a period of high inflation and challenging global supply chains. Deliveries have been delayed and entailed associated consequences which necessitated a revision of the project schedule.
The company finalised a first conversion project at its Bruck mill in Austria, where PM 3 was rebuilt for containerboard and restarted production in the second quarter of this year. It has an annual output capacity of 210,000 tpy of recycled fluting and testliner.
