An international conference attended by the largest pulp and paper industry players from Russia and China took place in Baoding, China. The event was organized by Ilim Group and Xiamen C&D Paper And Pulp Co., Ltd. The conference covered global trends in the pulp and board market and key investment projects aimed to increase Ilim’s product volumes through 2022, as the company said in the press release received by Lesprom Network.
Analysts forecast that global demand for virgin fiber will grow by more than 30 million tons by 2030, and the demand for virgin corrugated materials will grow by more than 10 million tons.
In 2017, China enforced a ban on the imports of a wide range of unsorted solid waste, which has triggered an increase in the manufacturing of environmentally friendly boards. Meanwhile the demand for packaging products is expected to grow in the next several years driven by improvement in the well-being of the population, domestic market development and expansion of trade, including e-commerce.
The Business Plan of Ilim Group presented to the Chinese partners at the conference takes all those factors into account. Big Ust-Ilimsk is a large-scale project intended to strengthen Ilim’s positions in China through construction of a new KLB line in Siberia. The project will be completed by 2022 to allow Ilim to increase its volumes of kraftliner and other packaging materials by 600 thousand tons per year. At the same time, the Bratsk Mill of Ilim Group is implementing the second stage of the upgrade project, including an upgrade of the KLB line. By the end of 2019, the capacity of the KLB line in Bratsk will grow by more than 100,000 tons per year.
Upon completion of the project in Ust-Ilimsk and upgrade of the Bratsk Mill, Ilim Group will become one of the largest manufacturers of unbleached packaging materials globally with a total board output of 1.5 million tons per year, bringing its aggregate production output to over 4.3 million tons per year.
“In 2017, we delivered more than $1 billion worth of products to the Chinese market”, said Ilim Group CEO Kseniia Sosnina. “By 2022, we plan to increase our exports to China up to 1.9 million tons. Our strategic goal is to achieve 2.4 million tons in 2023”.
