China’s Yibin Paper Fires up Last of Five 25,000-metric tpy TMs

China’s Sichuan Yibin Paper Industry has started up a new 25,000-metric tpy tissue machine at its mill in Yibin city, Sichuan province.

The unit churned out its first sheet of paper in mid-March. It is the last of five identical tissue machines the company ordered from A.Celli Paper for the site. The first three were commissioned between September and December last year. The fourth was fired up in January.

Each has a width of 2.8 m and a design speed of 1,800 m/min. The output of all the tissue PMs is partly furnished with in-house bamboo pulp from a 200,000-metric tpy line.

The tissue units are part of Yibin Paper’s relocation scheme that dates back to 2011. At that time, the company decided to shut down its sole mill close to the city center of Yibin and retire all the production lines there. The compensation for its divestment of the land-use rights and facilities associated with the plant was settled at RMB 1.29 billion ($192 million).

It moved to build a new mill around 30 km away, where it planned to erect a bamboo pulp line, a cartonboard PM and 100,000 metric tpy of tissue capacity.

The fiber line and the BM were commissioned in 2015, but the tissue project was delayed due to a lack of funds. In February 2017, the company received RMB 200 million from the local government as the first installment of the agreed compensation.

Later that year, it resurrected the tissue project and placed orders for the aforementioned five tissue PMs. As of February, Yibin Paper has received four instalments of the compensation, totalling RMB 818.6 million.

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