China’s Hengan Starts New 60,000-Tonne/yr TM in Chongqing

Hengan International fired up a new 60,000 tonne/yr tissue machine earlier this week at its mill in Chongqing municipality, in southwestern China.

Dubbed PM 23, the Andritz-supplied unit has a trim width of 5.6 m and a design speed of 2,000 m/min, and features an 18-foot steel Yankee dryer.

An identical line started trial runs there in March. The first two units, also provided by Andriz, were commissioned in 2012.

The startups have boosted the total tissue capacity at the Chongqing facility to 240,000 tonnes/yr. Hengan currently boasts an entire tissue capacity of approximately 1.26 million tonnes/yr, with five tissue paper mills operating across China.

Already the second largest tissue producer in the country, it is still expanding, with an eye to increasing its total capacity to 1.43 million tonnes/yr by year’s end or the first half of 2018.

Two 60,000-tonne/yr Valmet TMs are destined for installation at an existing mill in Weifang city, Shandong province. The company is also constructing a new plant in Changji, in Xinjiang autonomous region.

There, two Toscotec tissue machines, each able to churn out some 20,000-25,000 tonnes/yr, are scheduled to come online by the end of this year.

In April, the Hong Kong-listed hygiene products giant published its annual report for the year ending December. It reported a 3.3% uptick in its revenue to RMB 19.3 billion ($2.8 billion) last year. Its net profit rose by 7.4% year-on-year to RMB 3.5 billion.

Revenue from its tissue paper segment increased by 4.3% to RMB 9.1 billion, accounting for 47% of the company’s total turnover. The gross profit margin for its tissue business climbed slightly from 35.6% in 2015 to 37.9% in 2016 due to the lower price for wood pulp.