UPM_Biofore_Magazine2016_ENG_160623_e-magazine_72dpi

World's largest machine for release liners UPM's Chairman Björn Wahlroos and several directors of the board attended the grand opening ceremony in Changshu. “This doesn’t happen so often,” Wahlroos said. “In today’s world, it’s not so common to see investments of this size.” The PM3 start-up comes at a time when China's economy is slowing down. How does that affect UPM's investment? “We produce paper for the whole Asia-Pacific region, and China has the biggest share. One main reason behind this investment is that, long term, we don’t intend to increase the production of the same grades previously produced in Changshu – that is fine paper for printedmatters. The new paper machine is, in the longer term, mainly meant to produce release liners or glassine, and this is the world’s largest machine for that product group. Our competitors within that product group have much smaller machines whichmeans we’re less sensitive to changes in economic growth rates.” There has been a power shift towards Asia in the global economy. How will that affect UPM's future activities? “The power has perhaps not moved towards Asia; it has moved away fromEurope and it’s affected us very much. We’ve been forced to shut downmore than a dozen paper machines

Mr. Zhou Weiqiang, Deputy Party Secretary of Suzhou Municipal Communist Party Committee & Executive Vice Mayer of Suzhou Municipal Government and Mr. Björn Wahlroos Chairman of the Board, UPM.

Some 450 dignitaries, customers and suppliers were invited to the on-site grand opening event on 12 April.

in Europe. This is a trend that unfortunately will continue. The Europeanmarket is no longer growing and European demand for paper, especially newsprint, is falling. This means that we have to adjust to the global economy by decreasing our capacity in Europe, even though we’re quite profitable there today because we’ve maintained our best machines there, but we’ll expand in new areas, such as pulp production in Latin America and paper production in China.” China has become the world’s largest paper producer, but China’s paper industry also suffers from overcapacity ... “China’s paper industry is somewhat special. There are plenty of machines of various sizes and different production costs. We can see that China has a large number of very small, often not very efficient, machines. As in other markets, old, ineffective machines are gradually replaced. “Changshu is one of the world’s largest mills. We now have three big paper machines here: the two earlier ones, which each produce more than 400,000 tonnes, while the new PM3 means that we’ll be able to produce in total 1.4million tonnes annually.”

“Our competitors have much

smaller machines, which means we’re less sensitive to changes in economic growth rates.”

From left to right: Mr. Jussi Pesonen, Mr. Björn Wahlroos, Mr. Zhou Weiqiang, Deputy Party Secretary of Suzhou Municipal Communist Party Committee & Executive Vice Mayer of Suzhou Municipal Government; Minister Bu Zhengfa, Chairman, China Light Industry Council; Wang Yang, Party Secretary, Changshu Communist Party Committee & Mayor of Changshu Municipal Government.

He added that the core of UPM’s future business success in China is closely integrated with China’s 13th Five-Year Plan’s new concepts, which puts innovation at the forefront in a strategy aimed at a balanced, coordinated and sustainable growth pattern. “Innovation and technology in China is moving fast and we want to be a part of it,” said Pesonen. Pesonen said he was especially proud of the project’s safety record, with almost 4.5 million safe working hours and no lost-time accidents. “I’ve never heard of anyone being able to run a project of this size without any accidents, so this must be the best

Björn Wahlroos, Chairman, UPM.

safety performance in the world,” he said. “This project differs from the PM1 project (carried out between 2003 and 2007) since for PM3 two-thirds of our investment was sourced within China,” said Bernd Eikens of UPMPaper Asia. “As a frontrunner in both bio-economy and sustainability, we’re nowwell prepared for long-term growth for our customers and partners here in Asia.” UPMfirst invested in China in 1998

and has since investedmore than US$ 2 billion in the region. Today, the site boasts a fully integrated production and converting capability that incorporates a paper mill, a labelstock factory, an Asia research and development (R&D) centre as well as a supply chain centre for the Asia-Pacific region. With the new investment, UPM is able to produce 1.4 million tonnes of labelling material and fine papers for customers across the Asia- Pacific region and beyond.

28 | BIOFORE

2/2016  | 29