Lee & Man Fires up 60,000-Tonne/yr Tissue PM in Dongguan, China

Lee & Man Paper Manufacturing has kicked off trial production on a new 60,000 tonne/yr tissue PM at its Hongmei mill in Dongguan city, Guangdong province, China.

Dubbed TM 11, the Voith-supplied unit has a trim width of 5.6 m and a design speed of 2,000 m/min.

The start-up of an identical machine at the same site is imminent, which will boost the entire company’s total tissue capacity to 630,000 tonnes/yr. Both machines will be fed with wood pulp sourced from the market.

The two are the first TMs at the Hongmei plant, where six recycled packaging board machines with a combined capacity of 2.6 million tonnes/yr are already in operation.

Lee & Man is also constructing four Valmet tissue PMs at its mill in Gangqiao Industrial Park, in Chongqing municipality. Each also has a capacity of 60,000 tonnes/yr. They are expected to commence trial runs within the first four months of 2018.

The Chongqing facility is the company’s first and largest tissue production site, currently running eight tissue PMs with a combined capacity of 390,000 tonnes/yr.

Lee & Man’s speedy expansion has made Gangqiao Industrial Park a magnet for tissue converters. More than a dozen have set up converting lines there to process tissue jumbo rolls into finished products.