Comments
One of the largest greenfield projects in packaging board will go on stream in Tamil Nadu when Tamil Nadu Newsprint and Papers Ltd commissions its two-lakh-tonne a year factory by the year end.
Construction of the ₹1,500-crore plant, located in an industrially backward area in Tiruchi district, started last April and company officials are confident that by December the equipment will be fully set up and trial production started.
Installing of equipment started in January, a full month ahead of schedule. The first boiler of the factory’s 30 MW coal-based power plant will start generating power in July and the second by August — well on time to power the board machine when it starts churning out the finished product by the year-end.
The four-layer board machine and stock preparation machine are one of the latest of its kind supplied by Voith, Germany; Pesmel of Finland has supplied the automatic storage and retrieval system with a 30,000 tonnes storage capacity for reels and 10,000 tonnes of final product, sheets. TNPL is a ₹2,300-crore company making about 4 lakh tonnes of printing and writing paper annually. With the new factory, it will enter a fast growing segment within the paper sector.
High-end packagingThe unit will make high-end packaging board used in a wide range of industries including pharmaceuticals, food and consumer electronics.
The growth in organised retail and e-commerce is spurring the demand for packaging about 12-14 per cent a year.
According to company officials, in the first full year of operations when the factory is likely to reach 60-70 per cent capacity utilisation, the unit will add over ₹750 crore to the topline. It will reach full capacity in the third year. TNPL’s total annual production capacity will grow by 50 per cent to 6 lakh tonnes a year including printing and writing paper production in the first unit.
The machine is capable of making a wide range of multi-layered packaging boards such as basic boards like whiteline chipboard, used for making shoe boxes; folding box boards, used in high end packaging; and solid bleached sulphate board, cup stock used to make disposable cups.
As of now the major players in this segment are ITC, Century Paper and JK, according to industry sources.
Comments
COMMENT NOW
Comments
Comments have to be in English, and in full sentences. They cannot be abusive or personal. Please abide by our community guidelines for posting your comments.
We have migrated to a new commenting platform. If you are already a registered user of TheHindu Businessline and logged in, you may continue to engage with our articles. If you do not have an account please register and login to post comments. Users can access their older comments by logging into their accounts on Vuukle.