Shandong Chenming Paper Holdings is planning to build a 300,000tpy bleached softwood kraft (BSK) pulp line at a greenfield mill in Huanggang city, Hubei province.

A total of 216,500 ha of plantations will be established in Huanggang to secure woodchip supply for the fibre line.

A contact from Shandong Chenming confirmed construction will kick off next February.

Both the fibre line and plantation projects have been in the cards since 2008 when Shandong Chenming established a wholly owned subsidiary called Huanggang Chenming Pulp and Paper in the region.

The projects were greenlit in January 2012 by China’s Ministry of Environmental Protection.

The firm decided to accelerate the pulp line and plantation projects recently when it officially announced an investment of RMB 4.78 billion ($780 million) in the schemes.

Other details are not available at the moment.

More investment in Zhanjiang: Shandong Chenming is also planning more paper and board capacity at its mill in Zhanjiang city, Guangdong province.

In late September, the firm said that it will build two PMs at the site, which currently houses a 650,000tpy uncoated fine paper PM and a 700,000tpy bleached hardwood kraft (BHK) pulp line.

It aims to build a new 180,000tpy board PM there, mainly making cupstock, and a 190,000tpy printing and writing (P&W) paper unit.

A Shandong Chenming contact said that the P&W paper unit will be the machine it bought from Yanbian Shixian Bailu Papermaking earlier this year.

The PM used to produce newsprint at a rate of 180,000tpy. Shandong Chenming aims to rebuild it to produce low grammage P&W paper grades.

The Metso Paper machine has a width of 6.35m and a design speed of 1,600m/min.

In terms of the cupstock PM, no specific details have been released. The firm said that it has not reached any agreements on equipment purchases.

No timelines are available for the two PMs.

Tissue PM at Wuhan coming: Shandong Chenming will start up a new 60,000tpy tissue PM by the end of this month at its mill in Wuhan city, Hubei province.

The unit, supplied by Metso Paper, will have a width of 5.6m and a design speed of 2,000m/min.

                                                                                                                                      (RISI)