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APP Continues Tissue Expansion in Indonesia but Halts Developments in China in Face of Oversupply

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While gearing up for the commissioning of a massive 2.8 million-tonne/yr pulp mill in South Sumatra, Asia Pulp & Paper (APP) shifted its tissue paper expansion plans from China to Indonesia. The giant work site there has two 1.4 million-tonne/yr bleached hardwood kraft pulp lines, but start up is delayed until early months of 2017. The company envisages building several large tissue paper machines that will have a total capacity of half a million tones/yr at the plant sometime after the pulp lines come on stream. A project timeline for the tissue PMs still has to be hammered out. 

APP has already been expanding tissue capacity at other mills it owns in Indonesia. Between late 2014 and early 2015, the company started up two 5.6 m wide machines, each having a capacity of 60,000 tonnes/yr, at its pulp and paper mill in Perawang, Riau, Sumatra. The two units, which were supplied by A.Celli, have taken the number of tissue machines at the site to 20, with a combined capacity of 664,000 tonnes/yr. It is the largest tissue facility in the country. Meanwhile, the firm has decided to bring a close to its tissue expansion in China due to overcapacity there. Two 60,000-tonne/yr A.Celli machines initially destined for China were redirected to Indonesia, according to APP sources and the Italian supplier. One of them was erected at the company's Jambi mill in Sumatra and the other went to the Karawang plant in West Java. The two units came online in early 2016. These four new A.Celli machines boosted APP's total tissue capacity in Indonesia from 704,000 tonnes/yr to 1.064 million tonnes/yr. 

 Additionally, the company signed up Toscotec for a large deal that is intended to supply several large tissue machines. According to the manufacturer, two units are being shipped to Indonesia for the Perawang plant. Each of them will feature a steam hood and a 22-ft steel Yankee dryer, with a design speed of 2,000 m/min and a daily capacity of 192 tonnes. Installation work for one was scheduled to kick off in July 2016, with startup scheduled by the end of the year. The other unit is slated to come on stream soon after the first PM is commissioned.

Despite calling an end to further Chinese expansions, APP still has unfinished tissue projects in China. Two Valmet machines ordered a few years back, each able to make 60,000 tonnes/yr, have been delivered to APP's Suzhou mill and stored at the warehouse there. The facility is required by the local government to build a wastewater recycling system that will prevent any effluent from being discharged from the new PMs after they are commissioned, indicated an APP contact. With the Chinese tissue market plagued by oversupply, the company has not yet decided when to go ahead with the wastewater system and the two PMs. APP is also constructing a greenfield plant in the mountain town of Caobei in Yaan City, Sichuan. Two Jin Shun 27,000-tonne/yr PMs will be erected at the site, with start up planned for 2017. PMPoland received an order to deliver the headboxes for these PMs.
 

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