China’s Lee & Man Poised to Fire up Two TMs in Dongguan

Lee & Man Paper Manufacturing, the leading Chinese recycled packaging board producer, has been rapidly diversifying into the tissue sector since 2014.

It will fire up a 60,000 tonne/yr tissue machine at the Hongmei mill in Dongguan city, Guangdong province by the end of this month. An identical unit will follow in about two weeks, according to a company source.

Dubbed TM 11 and TM 12, the Voith-supplied tissue machines will be the first at the facility, which currently has a 2.6 million tonne/yr recycled containerboard capacity.

The company will also add four Valmet tissue units, each capable of producing 60,000 tonnes/yr, to its Chongqing mill in Southwest China.

The first two are expected to start up in January 2018, followed by the third and fourth in March and April respectively.

If the new projects stay on track, the company will boast a total tissue capacity of around 870,000 tonnes/yr by April 2018. 

The Jiujiang mill, Jiangxi province, also operates two tissue machines, which came on stream in the second quarter of this year.

The company has kicked off trial production on a new 400,000-tonne/yr recycled containerboard PM at its mill in Jiujiang.

Following mechanical tests from early October, the Valmet-supplied machine churned out its first sheet of board at the end of the month. Its output will be recycled fiber-based linerboard with a basis weight range of 90-250 g/m².